The Educational Problems of Pakistan

This research paper is an accomplishment to find out the educational problems of Pakistan.

The main motivation behind this the literacy rate of Pakistan. A study said that Pakistan have 48.7% literacy rate which is even less than 50%. This is because of several reasons like educational problems, corruption in education etc, that’s why I am motivated to conduct a research on educational problems.

Problems of Education in Pakistan

Introduction

Education must be a cheapest and most preceding item of a nation, and it’s a best weapon of a country. Countries that are well developed in this world have very strong educational system. Underdeveloped countries are losing in this effort, especially Pakistan. In the area of education, Pakistan is lagging behind other countries of South Asia, even lower than Nepal, Bangladesh and Maldives. Our education standard is uneven, private schools follow different syllabus and public schools follow different. Our private schools doing a bit good but our public schools perform badly and deteriorating its educational standard day by day. There is a lot of corruption in the public sector like cheating in exams, fake results, fake degrees etc.

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Why I have chosen this topic? The main motivation behind this the literacy rate of Pakistan. A study said that Pakistan have 48.7% literacy rate which is even less than 50%. This is because of several reasons like educational problems, corruption in education etc, that’s why I am motivated to conduct a research on educational problems.

I have read some articles on this topic, according to those articles still our population is not fully acknowledged about the importance of education especially in rural areas. Although there are some problems like lack of facilities, teacher training, syllabus and attitude of the people as well but the government should have enough strong plans to overcome these kinds of problems. Study reflected that the educated, working and economically sound parents were more interested towards Pre-school education. Pre-school education starts at the age of two or three up to five years and kids learn in ‘social learning environments’ (Ormrod, 1999) out of home. The preschool education actually results with personality traits and social development of the children in the school environment. Children learn more through relations with their age fellows. At early stage of life children are very sharp with their minds and they tends to do questioning and get understand things easily, that’s why early education is too essential for making them creative, artistic, social and developing communication skills. In Pakistan, formally education starts at the age of five years from grade-1. Working and economically well off parents prefer to send their children to day care centers, nursery or kindergarten schools at the age of three to five years. Private sector expands this facility in fact on commercial basis in urban areas throughout the country. While public schools, kids sit in pre-primary (Kachi Class) in multi-grade classrooms which are not equipped with appropriate facilities. Parents and kids faced problems due to lack of trained teachers and insufficient facilities in pre-school education centers. Previous studies attempting to explain the low level of educational development in Pakistan have pointed to a wide range of macro social issues from population growth and political instability to feudalism and a lack of human rights (Rahman, 2004).

Main problems that I have found government could not pay attention and don’t have strong policies to conduct this system in better way. In government schools we don’t have proper facilities for example furniture, trained teachers, books are not available in the market, the allocation of funds for education are very low. It is only 1.5 to 2.0 percent of the total GDP; the ratio of gender discrimination is a cause which is projecting the primary school ratio of boys & girls which is 10:4 respectively. For the last few years there has been an increase in the growth of private schools. That only harms the quality of education but creates a gap among them and Poverty is also another factor that restricts the parents to send their children to public or private schools. So, they prefer to send their children to madressahs where education is totally free.

Review of Literature

The literature review section is deals about the summary of articles that I have read.

This article has been written by “Mr Irshad Hussaina and Mr Sarwat Sultanb” and its title is “Parent’s literacy and pre-school education: a study of practices and problems of early childhood education in Pakistan” in this article the writers try to expose some main problems and root cause regarding pre-school education in Pakistan. They mentioned number of problems through which some of them I am describing. According to writers working parents and parents who are economically well off are more interested to give their children pre-school education that’s mean people have money problem, they can’t afford schooling fees. Along with the income problem our schools do not provide good study environment, we are lacking of class room facilities especially in government schools, our teachers are not well trained, we are not providing good syllabus to our children and make our syllabus interesting so that kids show their desire towards studies and do not waste their golden time. We should take some measures regarding all the problems because when kids at their early stage of life, they are very intelligent with their minds and they have a propensity to do inquiring and get understand things easily, that’s why early education is too essential for making them creative, artistic, social and developing communication skills. The study was descriptive in nature, so that survey approach was considered more suitable and adopted to collect the data. Sample size was 120 parents and the areas were Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and Bahawalpur Districts. Two research tools a questionnaire on five point rating (likert) scale and an interview schedule were developed. Interview schedule were used for deep understanding of the scenario. The data analyzed on the basis of qualitative and quantitative method and mean score. Results were shown in percentages in the form of tables. (Mr. Irshad Hussaina and Mr. Sarwat Sultanb Jan 5,2010)

This article has been written by “Taro Komatsu” and its title is “Qualitative inquiry into local education administration in Pakistan” in this article the author explained that the educational development in Pakistan is very low. In year 2000 government introduce decentralization system to improve the delivery of basic education which was administering by local government body who take control on its primary responsibilities. By doing research he specifically talked about the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan which was found problematic in terms of effective and efficient delivery of education along with shortage of teachers. He finds out many findings which are interconnected with each other and are mainly cause educational destruction. The district education office is over loaded with work handling. Transfers of teachers to different areas are big issue, teachers want to do job in their home cities and reasons behind this were categorized in to following: inconveniences relating to travel and accommodation; cultural Constraints; and economical constraints. Local education officers seem to place high main concern on moral development as the role of public education, but not keenly request to find and satisfy the particular needs of the local area.

The author utilized ethnographic observational techniques and semi-structured interviews; both are commonly used qualitative research methods. Research was conducted in two districts of the NWFP, Pakistan. Two districts were chosen based on comparative geographical characteristics; one is urban, and the other is rural. (Taro Komatsu 29, 2009)

This article has been written by “Jo Westbrook, Nazneen Shah a, Naureen Durrani, Clare Tikly, Wazim Khan and Ma´ ire ´ad Dunne” and its title is “Becoming a teacher: Transitions from training to the classroom in the NWFP, Pakistan” this article is about the educational level of teachers which are teaching in schools especially in case of north west Frontier of Pakistan. Writes tried to find out capabilities of teachers, have the guts to do teaching or just they passing time and generating their income only. With respect to this they also concentrate on the conditions of schools and their class rooms. More over they bring in to light the importance of superior thought towards the social and professional perspective of the school within training program as a means to make continual improvements in the quality of classroom teaching and learning. Results initiate with the newly qualified teachers NQT’s describe the importance what they learned from their trainings and how they implement to the students. Three set of constraints were taken out from the analysis of the transition from student to teacher. Out of those three, two were related to the physical conditions of the schools and cultural context of the schools community. While the third constraint related to the professional climate and support for the newly trained teachers within the school. They also give some statistic figures about literacy rate of Pakistan and those figures I am just copying from the article the overall literacy rate is 48.7%, with 61.7% male literacy compared to 35.2% among females (UNESCO, 2005). There are 6.6 million children out of primary school (Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 2006). More than half the children in Pakistan drop out of school before completing the fifth grade. On average, females remain in school for 1.3 years and males for 3.8 years (Qureshi, 2003). The methodology they were used is a small scale collaborative research study in two state secondary schools, one girl’s and one boy’s. Data was collected from Questionnaires and they also conducted Focus group interviews to the people just to strengthen their information. (Jo Westbrook, Nazneen Shah, Naureen Durrani, Clare Tikly, Wazim Khan and Ma´ ire ´ad Dunne, 29,2009)

This article has been written by “Anjum Halai” and its title is “Equality or equity: Gender awareness issues in secondary schools in Pakistan” in this article writer addresses the gender discrimination issue, this issue strongly affects the quality education in Pakistan. Writer takes this gender difference from a prospective of social justice and he explained that in Pakistan boys and girls are taking education separately in the class rooms therefore teachers and others tend to think that there are no gender differences. However beyond this there are several reasons which create this issue and affects quality education in Pakistan. Writer talked about from the prospective of secondary schooling education in Pakistan. The Education for All (EFA) goals acknowledge that gender equity is also a significant element of quality in education (UNESCO, 2003). According to the information provided in the latest UNESCO EFA Global Monitoring Report, in South and West Asia there are 57 million more children in school in 2007 than in 1999. In 2007, the net enrolment ratio is 86% (up on 74% in 1999), the gender equality indicator is 0.96 (up on 0.84 in 1999). In 2007, there were an estimated 18 million children out of school, 58% of whom were girls, an improvement on figures for 1999 when there were 39 million children out of school, 63% of who were girls (UNESCO, 2010, pp. 346-347). An issue with numerical index and measures of gender equality in education is that they do not reflect the inborn biases and inequity in classroom practice which often noticeable cultural and societal pattern of behaviors and established stereotypical gender character of women and men. According to writer this is only due to our old traditions especially in rural areas which declared girls are prohibited for getting education. We are stick to give separate environment to females and males typically at secondary school level, not only students but we give priority to have same sex teacher as well. (Anjum Halai 2010)

This article has been written by “Anne Cockcroft, Neil Andersson , Deborah Milne , Khalid Omer , Noor Ansari , Amir Khan and Ubaid Ullah Chaudhry” and its title is “Challenging the myths about madaris in Pakistan: A national household survey of enrolment and reasons for choosing religious schools” writers discussed about Madaaris in this article, they explained there are rumors about madaaris that they are the source of terrorists. Madaris in Pakistan are now a subject of considerable international attention. A number of reports have expressed concern that at least some of these institutions promote religious extremism and terrorism (International Crisis Group, 2002; Khokhar, 2007; Singer, 2001; Stern, 2000). A recent study of 79 terrorists involved in anti-Western attacks found that very few had attended a madarsah (Bergen and Pandey, 2006), but Fair (2007) has suggested that terrorist groups may selectively engage better qualified people for technically demanding tasks.

Reliable data about madaris in Pakistan are limited. Most reports rely on secondary data analysis, or repeat unsubstantiated estimates or claims about madaris. Some reports suggest very high levels of enrolment into madaris, and that they provide a extensive part of education in Pakistan (International Crisis Group, 2002; Singer, 2001). they said according to several authors parents send their children to the madaaris due to their poverty and failure of state education system. (Singer, 2001; Smith, 2002). There data collection methodology as follows madarsah enrolment among 53,960 representative households; 853 focus groups of parents discussed enrolment choices. In 2004, 2.6% of all children (3.8% of school-going children) aged 5-9 years attended a madarsah. Children from urban and less educated households were more likely to attend a madarsah, but there was no difference by sex of the child or household vulnerability. Along with this sample they held focus groups, discussion groups and analyze the data through computers and represent it in the form of diagrams and tables. (Anne Cockcroft, Neil Andersson , Deborah Milne , Khalid Omer , Noor Ansari , Amir Khan and Ubaid Ullah Chaudhry, 2008)

This article has been written by “Kevin R. McClure” and its title is “Madrasas and Pakistan’s education agenda: Western media misrepresentation and policy recommendations” in this article researcher attempt to show the educational programs of madaris and Pakistan’s education which was critically observed by Western media. Author briefly describe the educational system of Pakistan according to him Pakistan have four provinces and each province has its own educational board and bureau of curriculum and schools which are located in the capital are controlled by Minister of education Pakistan. Generally, primary education refers to grades one through five; middle education, grades six through eight; and secondary education, grades nine through 10; higher secondary education contain intermediate grades 11 and 12, which leads to tertiary education, two years after which a bachelor’s degree can be earned this is the basic educational structure in Pakistan. According to Riaz (2008), three ”streams” have shouldered education provision in Pakistan since its independence from Britain in 1947: Urdu-medium public schools, English-medium private schools, and madrasas. Writer also given the definition of madrasas that are in Arabic madrasa means “school” We define madrasas as schools that teach a religious curriculum instead of one prescribed by the Pakistan Federal Ministry of Education” (Andrabi et al., 2006). Broad definitions are not incorrect, as schools that promote Islamic curricula are in South Asia generally referred to as madrasas (Riaz, 2008). But these madarees are not under Pakistani government and they developed their own syllabus although government announced that Islamic education compulsory in schools.( Kevin R. McClure 2009).

This article has been written by “Jessica Holmes” and its title is “Measuring the determinants of school completion in Pakistan: analysis of censoring and selection bias “this article is about need of schools in Pakistan according to the survey of 1991 there are lack of schools, low enrollment rate, low educational level, high illiteracy rate and a large disparity between male and female gender. Than after this he also told that school attainment also depend on the family characteristics, means parents give how much importance to the education. Than it also depend on the income level of the family, are they afford their child’s educational expense. People who don’t have enough money to fulfill their necessities of life ,their food, their shelter, their cloths than how we expect them that they give education to their children so according to writer it’s a responsibility of state one who can’t afford his child education government need to provide him free education.( Jessica Holmes).

This article has been written by “Babar Zaheer Butt, Kashif ur Rehman” and its title is “A study examining the student’s satisfaction in higher education” this article is about the students satisfaction in higher education in Pakistan. Satisfactions in term of teacher expertise, courses, class room facilities and learning environment. Educational department is developing day by day so rapidly all over the word is just because of globalization and digital revolution; it has created a demand for new and various disciplines in education. In current time higher education sector in Pakistan has developed outstandingly in terms of number of institutions and students enrolment due to some serious steps taken by the government. This situation demands and increases the students’ interest in higher education in Pakistan. This article examines the determinants of students’ satisfaction in higher education and their influence on level of satisfaction. From the results it is marked that students are satisfied with higher education in Pakistan. (Babar Zaheer Butt, Kashif ur Rehman 2010).

This article has been written by “Nadeem Khan and Arshad Ali” and its title is “Improving the speaking ability in English: The students’ perspective” writer start with the words of Quaid-azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah said in Educational Conference in 1947, “During the last three or four decades, English has displaced French as the leading language of the world and the recent emergence of basic English is likely to extend its domination still further. Besides, from purely self regarding motives, we should not easily throw away a language which gives us so easy an access to all the secrets of Western Science and Culture (pp 11-12)”.in this article writer want to tell the importance of English as a subject and as a language. We should learn English language because now a day’s it’s a most commonly speaking language in the world. We should learn English because our all syllabus is in English language and it’s also necessary for higher education and help us in a conversation with rest of the world. Our government should conducted classes English language, speaking skills and writing skills have been learnt and this is done at least in school level, so that we made good base to our children.

(Nadeem Khan and Arshad Ali, 2010).

This article has been written by “Farzana Shafique, Khalid Mahmood” and its title is “The role of educational information systems for survival in information society and the case of Pakistan” authors discussed about the role of educational information in the survival of today’s world. According to writers there are three revolutions took place: industrial revolution; agriculture revolution and the third one is informational revolution. The said informational revolution not came within one or two days there are five revolutions behind this as a base. And those were as follows a) the invention of language; b) the invention of writing and then the printing press; c) the introduction of mass media; d) the invention of computers; and e) the marriage of telecommunications and computers (Boaz, 1981). The digital revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) has produced the stand for a global stream of information, ideas, and knowledge. This revolution has made a reflective sense on the way the world functions and has transformed it to a developing information society (Shafique & Mahmood, 2008).

Behind all this, education is the main mean for these luminous expansions. With all this fact we are still far behind in this field. It is evident from the article prospective that existing information systems in Pakistan is designed to facilitate the educational administrators which are not healthy and well planned, and as a result we are not capable to smooth the progress of the educational administrators in practical planning and decision making. (Farzana Shafique, Khalid Mahmood 2010).

This article has been written by “Matthew J. Nelson” and its title is “MUSLIMS, MARKETS, AND THE MEANING OF A “GOOD” EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN” in this article author try to compare religious education and the market oriented education and also reflect the type of educational demand in Pakistan. By concluding this article, we get to know that people prefer religious education over the secular. Because 98% people want the Islamic education as part of the education syllabus and most people believe it as necessary and give first priority to Islamic education. Islamic education does not mean that people who are getting education from Midrasas are always go for jihad but most of people who got trained from Midrasas, go for to manage the mosques. Our parents want to give their child religious education, they do not deny market oriented education but they prefer madarassas. So it’s a responsibility of state to take hold on that religious educational institution and allot them a very high-quality syllabus so that our children acquire not only Islamic education but also get school education. (Matthew J. Nelson, 2006).

This article has been written by “Hafiz M. Iqbal, Shahida Sohail and Shumaila Shahzad” and its title is “Learning and study strategies used by university students in Pakistan” In this article, researcher has investigated the learning and studies strategies of the university student of Pakistan. There may be many factors which contribute to the academic success of the students like how to learn, how to manage the time, understanding and remembering. After carrying out research the results were not as much different. This is due to the open availability of libraries and internet labs where students work together to complete their assignments and it also help them to increase their knowledge. First the semester system is very good for university students because it provide students their frequent assessment and feedback. Researcher took sample of 440 students from 9 faculties of university of Punjab and those 9 faculties were as follows Arts and Humanities, Behavioral and Social Sciences, Commerce, Economics and Management Sciences, Education, Engineering and Technology, Law, Life-Sciences, and Science. Mean score of all the scales was calculated for comparison with American percentile norm. ANOVA was applied for comparison of all the faculties on LASSI scales. Later on, LSD was applied. The main purpose of the study was just to find out need for students to improve their skills to avoid serious problems succeeding in university. (Hafiz M. Iqbal, Shahida Sohail and Shumaila Shahzad, 2010).

Methodology

My topic of research is problems of education in Pakistan as my area of study is descriptive in nature so I go for survey approach and it is more feasible for me as compared to any other research approach. I can go for develop questionnaires and fill these questionnaires from different big cities of Pakistan like Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, etc I can also send these questionnaires to the well known universities of Pakistan just to conduct research on higher education system of Pakistan. With all above mentioned methodology I can also go for focus group, interviews as well with the different households and universities students of different cities of Pakistan. Before conducting this research first of all I have to specify the population and then get sample form this population. After collecting all the data I have to came up with my own theory and also specify dependent and independent variables. In my case it is very clear that education is dependent variable while all the problems like people income, people awareness, quality syllabus, best qualified teachers, government policies regarding education and many others all are the independent variables. After doing all above procedure I have to use statistical method like ANOVA test for extracting concluding results. Then compare these results with the best providing education countries.

Conclusion

In this research I had studied around 12 different research articles on the problems of education in Pakistan. The titles and authors name of these 12 articles are given under the heading of references. Now I am concluding my research as my topic is about educational problems in Pakistan first of all I am declaring some of the biggest problems regarding education which Pakistan has faced and then give their solution.

These problems are as follows:

• The first biggest problem that I felt is the parents literacy, still now our people do not enough aware about the role of education in a society but this problem mostly exist in a rural areas of Pakistan.
• Second problem is regarding the income of people which means people do not afford the education fees of their children this problem is especially for the students who are getting their higher education but there are people who even could not afford the pre-school education as well.
• Third is about the conditions of schools, class rooms and its environment is so pathetic that it frustrating students from education. In the same we ran short of faculty and do not have well trained teacher staff. Then we have a great problem of gender discrimination and the last but not least is our educational policies we just spend 2.6% of our total budget on education.

There is always a solution to get rid of all the problems so we have to take steps to remove our problems regarding education. First of all government should organize teams, conducting programs on TV in which they have to tell their nation about the importance of education. These things especially do in the rural areas so that people will develop a sense of responsibility and send their children to the schools. Government should give subsidy on the education industry so that people easily afford the expenses of education. Government should make sound policies on the subject of education and also the budget so that people will get education easily. By increasing in the educational budget we can make more libraries, chemical labs and engineering labs and can boost our research work as well.

References

Butt, B.Z. and Rehman, K. (2010),”A study examining the student’s satisfaction in higher education”, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2 (2010), pp. 5446-5450.

Cockcroft,A, Andersson,N , Milne,D, Omer,K, Ansari,N, Khan,A. and Chaudhry,U.U. (2008), “Challenging The Myths About Madaris In Pakistan: A National Household Survey Of Enrolment And Reasons For Choosing Religious Schools”, International Journal Of Educational Development, 29 (2009), pp. 342-349.

Halai,A. (2010),” Equality Or Equity: Gender Awareness Issues In Secondary Schools In Pakistan”, International Journal Of Educational Development, 31 (2011), pp. 44-49.

Holmes,J. (2002),” Measuring The Determinants Of School Completion In Pakistan: Analysis Of Censoring And Selection Bias”, Economics Of Education Review, 22 (2003), pp. 249-264.

Hussain,I, Sultan,S. (2010), “Parent’s Literacy And Pre-School Education: A Study Of Practices And Problems Of Early Childhood Education In Pakistan”, Procedia Social And Behavioral Sciences, 2 (2010), pp.624-628.

Iqbal, H.M, Sohail, S. and Shahzad, S. (), “Learning and study strategies used by university students in Pakistan”, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2 (2010), pp. 4717-4721.

Komatsu,T. (2008),” Qualitative Inquiry Into Local Education Administration In Pakistan”, International Journal Of Educational Development, 29 (2009), pp. 219-226.

Mcclure,K.R. (2009), “Madrasas and Pakistan’s Education Agenda: Western Media Misrepresentation And Policy Recommendations”, International Journal Of Educational Development, 29 (2009), pp. 334-341.

Nadeem Khan, N. and Arshad Ali, A. (2010), “Improving the speaking ability in English: The students’ perspective”, Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2 (2010), pp. 3575-3579.

Nelson, M.J. (2006), “MUSLIMS, MARKETS, AND THE MEANING OF A “GOOD” EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN”, Asian Survey, Vol. 46, No. 5 (September/October 2006), pp. 699-720.

Shafique, F. and Mahmood, K. (2010), “The role of educational information systems for survival in information society and the case of Pakistan”, The International Information & Library Review, (2010) NO.42, pp.164e173.

Westbrook,J, Shah,N, Durrani,N, Tikly,C, Khan,W. and Dunne,M.I. (2008),” Becoming A Teacher: Transitions From Training To The Classroom In The NWFP, Pakistan”, International Journal Of Educational Development, 29 (2009), pp. 437-444.