A colossal failure

We in Pakistan and other fellow South Asian countries, may produce excellent orators, utopian political thinkers and great historians, but we are poorly educated and not even semi-skilled, to effectively take up cudgels with harsh realities of our times. It is indeed a telling reflection of the poor quality of our educational system. It is not some kind of admission we made on our own, it is a verdict of the World Bank. The report issued by the World Bank Vice President for South Asia Region, Philippe Le Houerou, is a telling commentary on this failing of South Asian governments, who never tires of talking high of the massive human capital their countries possess, but don't go beyond that brag - for, either their education ministers lack comprehension of this challenge or maybe they are mere un-disposable political appendages. In Pakistan, there is this instance of double jeopardy: not only our education sector is expected to take a back seat in the affairs of governance but it is also cut apart between the provinces and the Centre, treated as orphan at both the places. The poor quality of education in South Asia as reflected in low learning levels, traps many of its young people in poverty and prevents faster economic growth and more broadly-shared prosperity, says the report. Conceding their 'tremendous' progress in increasing access to schooling - in pursuance of the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education by 2015 - the report points out that 'just spending time in school is not enough'. Le Houerou believes there has to be a significant gain in skills that requires an improvement in the quality of education. Only this will help the countries in the region 'to reap the full expected returns on their investments and generate gains in productivity and economic growth'. Among the South Asian countries Sri Lanka is a 'clear outlier' having achieved near-universal primary education decades ago. But Pakistan and Afghanistan still lag significantly behind others. One may readily blame this failure on the Taliban's Boko-Haram style destruction of schools, but the fact also remains that even in peaceful locations in Pakistan, schools are being used as cattle pens and funds are misappropriated in the name of 'ghost schools'. Much of what South Asian students are taught is 'procedural' or rote-based. Students are poorly prepared in practical competencies such as measurement, problem-solving, and writing of grammatically correct sentences.
According to one of the report authors, Halil Dundar, the poor quality of education is a major obstacle to South Asia's future economic prospects, but by raising the quality of education the region's economic landscape can be transformed. How to go about it? The World Bank recommends a multi-pronged strategy, including initiatives outside the education sector. For one, it says the young children should get enough nutrition, as South Asia has the world's highest rates of childhood malnutrition, which tends to damage their ability to learn. Then raise the teacher quality says the World Bank report, for as of today they 'barely know more than their students'. For instance, in Pakistan and India teachers perform poorly in math and language tests based on curriculum they are supposed to teach, a malaise aggravated by teaching staff's above average absenteeism and their non-merit-based recruitment. The report underscores the imperative of bringing in the private sector because the governments of these countries cannot afford to improve educational quality by themselves. There is also the need to monitor the student progress to check quality and reliability of assessments and benchmarking national learning outcomes against international standards. No wonder then, even the best of the lot produced by South Asian universities have to undergo stiff testing and quite often extensive reorientation-cum-improvement courses while seeking jobs abroad. One won't grudge the Nawaz Sharif government giving computers to the achievers, but then it is essentially patronizing a small section of student community. The challenge lays somewhere else - how about millions of ordinary children whose access to quality education remains impeded. For Pakistan and its South Asian neighbours that are not blessed by nature's bounties and whose biggest asset are their huge and predominantly young population, the best bet for the economic growth is their human capital. But unless excavated, chiselled, and polished to international market standards, it won't acquire the value-addition. The concerned authorities need to go through the fine print of this report and if needed seek international help to improve the quality of education. We do need fine orators and competent political scientists but more than that we need non-conformist educators and mission-oriented ministers. This changeover brooks no further delay.