Rural & urban areas: ADB sees stark disparities in learning levels across public, private schools

ISLAMABAD: While Pakistan has achieved remarkable progress toward universal primary education through a significant expansion of school access, stark disparities in learning levels persist across public and private schools and schools in rural and urban areas, says the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The bank in its latest report, “Strengthening School Teaching in Pakistan”, stated that inadequate opportunities and incentives for professional development and career progression had rendered teaching an unappealing career choice in Pakistan, resulting in almost a fifth of all teachers quitting the profession. High teacher turnover and a slow replacement process increase the challenges of teacher deployment across schools.

While Pakistan has increased the number and skills of its schoolteachers, it still faces challenges in ensuring the availability of quality teaching including inadequate numbers of qualified teachers, particularly subject specialists; uneven distribution of teachers across schools; teacher absenteeism; low teacher accountability; and insufficient training opportunities and incentives.

The bank stated that strengthening a merit-based system to link teacher promotion and career progression to teaching efficacy rather than to seniority or social connections is crucial. The current practice of promoting high-performing teachers to managerial or administrative positions could be discontinued.

The performance appraisal mechanism for teachers needs to be strengthened and linked to career progression. Presently, schoolteachers are assessed using generic criteria set for all government employees under the Annual Confidential Reports system, which has little relevance to the role of a modern teacher.

The government needs to strengthen the capacity of teacher training institutions by increasing the number and quality of teacher educators and trainers to help improve teaching quality, the Bank recommended.

In general, a more uniform geographical distribution of teachers across school levels and schools within each level is needed to eliminate disparities in pupil–teacher ratios (PTRs) and reduce multi-grade teaching. While schools in large urban centres often have surplus teachers, schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areas suffer from teacher shortages.

The teacher rationalisation policy introduced in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh needs to be prioritised and implemented fully to augment the fairness and transparency of the teacher deployment and transfer process.

The report also pointed out that for several decades, teacher absenteeism has remained a key challenge at schools in Pakistan. Dedicated efforts by the School Education Department in Punjab Province and the School Education and Literacy Department in Sindh Province have focused on addressing this issue by employing biometric technology and penal action against irregular teacher attendance.

While these measures have yielded improvements in teacher attendance in the country as a whole, some provinces still suffer from irregular and uncertain teacher presence. Findings from the 2019 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) indicate overall teacher attendance of 87 percent in surveyed government schools and 94 percent in private schools in urban areas. For both public and private schools in rural areas, teacher attendance was reported at 89 percent.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023