Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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The language medium is a very prominent debate in Pakistan with provinces abolishing and
reinstating language policies thus leading to further confusion. For example, in Punjab, the trend
in recent years has been to use English starting from Class 1444. In 2014 however, it reviewed the
policy and again allowed the use of Urdu in Classes 1-2-3. Sindh is the only province where
teaching in the mother tongue is the normduring the early years of schooling. Balochistan decided
to introduce instruction in children’s mother tongue but implementation was too difficult and the
decision was reversed. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, only a few schools in some districts teach in
children’s mother tongue and has introduced English in Class 1 since 2014445.
Teachers’ management446: Governance issues relating to teacher recruitment and deployment
constitute a barrier to accessing quality education as recruiting quality teachers in large numbers
is a very difficult challenge. Quality education cannot be provided unless teachers are motivated,
supported and their careers effectively managed447.
Political recruitment. Firstly, there was a tradition of political appointments of teachers that
started in the 1970s when quotas were given to elected members of the national and provincial
assemblies448. This tradition was not conducive to hiring qualified teachers. While in recent years
merit-based recruiting has been on the rise, the practice of political appointment of teachers
continues and is deleterious to quality education. Beyond recruitment, as public servants,
teachers undergo an annual performance evaluation but promotions are still often based on
seniority and political connections rather than performance.
Mismatched skills. Another issue in the teacher recruitment and deployment system is the fact that
there is little correlation between the major of the teachers’ degrees and the subject they end up
teaching in schools449.
Weak accountability. As seen earlier under the ‘governance’ section, the weak supervision and
accountability mechanisms in the education sector lead to low-performing teachers. There exist
two main accountability systems in education, the teacher performance evaluations and the
school inspections for head teachers that assign scores to staff and schools. While the systems
exist and have potential to improve accountability, they are currently very weak. Weaknesses
include promotions not being tied to scores and also the fact that scores are based on information
that is not related to learning and finally, everyone tends to get the same score (ratings
compression phenomenon). One of the concerning results of these weak systems is the current
high rate of teacher absenteeism.
Contracts. Most teachers in public schools are on permanent contracts or get on those contracts
after a few years of service. The rules governing the provision of permanent jobs, the career
444 Alif Ailaan (2014)
445 Alif Ailaan (2014)
446 Alif Ailaan (2014)
447UNDP Pakistan “Education Governance Conundrum”
2/analysis--education--governance-conundrum.html
448 Alif Ailaan (2014)
449 Alif Ailaan (2014)