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Semester: Autumn, 2020 ASSIGNMENT No. 2 Q.1 Critically examine the hidden curriculum planning. Organizations around the globe develop strategic plans. They carefully create a vision of their future and the strategies needed to get there. But many fail to realize their vision and fail to deliver the expected strategic results. Unfortunately, executive teams cannot pinpoint the reasons for this dilemma so they repeat the strategic planning cycle over and over, always hoping that the next strategic planning session will bring better results. And of course it doesn’t. In our experience, there are 5 critical factors that will ensure your strategic plans are successfully implemented.
- Engagement “Only 23% of companies use a formal strategic planning process to make important strategic decisions. In 52% of companies, these decisions are made by a small senior group.” McKinsey & Co. Strategic Planning is a process not an event. A key element in the process is the engagement of all levels of staff throughout the organization. Staff engagement generates additional input and helps build their commitment to the end plan. It is essential to involve employees in the planning of strategy and direction for the organization. Employee’s input will: Provide insight into issues, challenges, concerns, and opportunities which may not have been known or fully understood. Ensure their “buy-in” to help execute the strategies. The senior management team will not execute the strategies – staff will. Engage them and your strategy execution success rate will increase dramatically.
- Communication “2 out of 3 HR and IT departments develop plans that are not linked to the company’s overall strategy”. Harvard Business School Strategic Planning processes are successful when a bottom up and top down communication approach is taken. It starts off with a communication to all levels of employees informing them that a Strategic Planning process will be undertaken. It includes how they will be involved in this process. This is the bottom up communication. Employees will provide input to the strategic planning process through feedback surveys, focus groups, meetings, etc. regarding their ideas for organizational direction, etc. It is followed by the top down communication. Senior management will share the strategic plan with employees. They will communicate to all employees how their engagement will help ensure success in the execution of these strategies.
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- Innovation “Organizations need the courage to try something risky that they don’t know will work. Why? Because if they know it will work, they’ll only get an improvement to what they already have. Yet if they try something that is a little dangerous and new, they will realize true innovation.” Michael Stanleigh Some strategic plans include strategies to develop a new product or deliver a new service or re-structure a department, etc. They put teams of individuals together to work on these major initiatives and give them investment money to ensure success. Yet over time it becomes apparent that this team won’t realize the strategic goal given to them and the strategy itself will be deemed a failure. This is wrong!! This is not a failure of execution. It is the lack of an Innovation Process to manage the strategy that led to the failure. The senior management created strategies that required innovation to achieve them. This is unfortunately, very common. Many organizations tell their employees to be more innovative. They create strategies for new products and services. But they fail to develop a strategy for Innovation which includes reshaping the organizational culture to be innovative, implementing a process for managing innovations, etc. Research in Motion is a classic case. They’ll tell you that they’re very innovative. They market it and promote it. But look at their Strategic Plan. They lack a clear strategy for innovation – but they do have strategies for new product development. Yet since the development of the Blackberry, they haven’t released a single innovative product. They will of course disagree. The Playbook is an Ipad with less functionality. It’s not an innovation. However, there are many examples of organizations that have a strategy for innovation and this helps drive their new product and service delivery strategies. These include Apple, Google, Zodiac and BMW.
- Project Management “Most devastatingly, 95% of employees do not understand their company’s strategy. (How are they supposed to execute a plan if they don’t understand it?)” Harvard Business School Once the strategic plan is together, there are two critical elements related to project management. One is to identify the projects that are required to ensure success in the execution of each strategy. Another is to develop a prioritization of all these projects to ensure the high priority ones have the proper resourcing to ensure success. This requires a high involvement and commitment on the part of employees to spend the time required on the projects. The high level of involvement of employees ensures that they understand the strategic plan. It increases their level of commitment to ensure the strategy is successfully executed because they understand how their work and the work they’re completing on the project helps the organization to realize some or all of one of their key strategies.
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- Validity: The content of the curriculum is valid if it promotes the outcome that it is intended to promote. It is also the authenticity of the subject matter or content selected, to make sure the topics are not obsolete, for this to be achieve, there should be a regular check on the curriculum content and replace it if necessary.
- Self sufficiency: This criterion helps learners attain maximum self sufficiency at the most economical manner or content selection. This is done when the students or learners are given the chance to experiment, observe and carryout field study. Significance: The content is significant if it is selected and organized for the developed of learning activities, skills, processes and attitude that will help in solving the problem of the country. It also develops the three domain of learning namely cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills and considers the cultural aspect of the learners particularly, if your learners come from different cultural background and races then the content must be cultural sensitive.
- Interest: This criterion is true to be learned centred curriculum. The interest of the students should be considered in selecting content because students learn best if the subject matter is meaningful to them. It becomes meaningful if they are interested in it. But if the curriculum is subject centred, teachers have no choice but to finish the facing schedule religiously and teach only what is in the book, this may explain why many fail in subject sometimes.
- Learnability: The content should be what the students can learn and should be within their experience. Teachers should apply theories on psychology of learning in order to know their subject are presented, sequenced an organized to maximize the learning capacity of the students
- Utility: This is the usefulness of the content in solving problems now and in future. It is more important in skill or procedural. Knowledge, whereby learners can put what they have learnt into practice life activities Consistency with Social Realities: This means that content should be chosen based on the facy that they relates to our present social needs economic and political situation. Content must be acceptable to the culture and belief system of the people. CRITERIA FOR SELECTING LEARNING EXPERIENCE The condition for selecting learning experiences by the experts must base on the recent or modern principles of learning. These criteria are:
- Validity: Learning experience is valid when it related objectives are in any of the three domains; cognitive, affective and psychomotor, the learning experience must be holistic to involve all the domains.
- Variety: Learners are different and learn, in different ways base on their interest and ability therefore varied learning experience must be provided to help them comprehend Interest: So that the desired objectives can be achieve and also for learners to demand pleasure learning experiences from tem must be of great interest to the learner.
- Relevance to Life: Learning experience must be relevant to real-life situations in school and in the society to help learners understand their society and proffer solutions to some problems of the society. This
Semester: Autumn, 2020 is where community based resources comes to play. Experience in real content and situation bring realism to teaching and learning.
- Suitability: Learning experience must not be too simple nor complex but rather be suitable for the age or level of the learners and for the content which it is meant for.
- Comprehensive: Learning experience must cover all the stated objectives in a lesson; it must range from the simplest learning experiences to the most complex, covering all the domains of learning. Potential for multiple Learning: This means that learning experiences are not fashioned for different distinct domains of instructional objectives. Therefore, it is necessary to plan for learning experiences that will provide for the three domains as strategy for multiple learning. A single learning experience should involve cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of learning, hence it is said to be comprehensive. ORGANIZATIONAL AND INTEGRATION OF LEARNING EXPERIENCES AND CONTENT After learning experience and content have been selected, the next step to take is to organize them. These organization of learning experience and content is based on the cumulative development behavior the learners gradually experience during the educational process. Content and learning experience are organized in two relationship bases; vertical and horizontal relationship; Vertical organization is the arrangement of learning experiences and content over a time sequence access classes in the same subject. For instance, for a four year programme in English, language, contents are arranged in hierarchical order, from the lowest level to the highest level. This arrangement learning of English language becomes cumulative as knowledge continues to build up over time. This knowledge building starts from simple to complex in the subject progressively. The horizontal organization occurs when the learning in one subject enhances the knowledge, skill and attitude in another subject within the same class. For instance, there should be a relationship between the knowledge acquired in biology and that of agricultural science, the knowledge and skills acquired in economics lessons can enhance that of political science within the same class. There are certain criteria that must be met in organizing learning experience and content. These include:
- Continuity: It is the recurring emphasis on the learners experience on a particular element or kind of activities, until mastery is achieved. With mastery, learners develop progressively, systematically and naturally, with new knowledge building on earlier acquired knowledge and thus learners can gain competence.
- Sequence: It is also related to continuity as well as progressively moving from the lower to the higher level of knowledge and from simple to complex. In sequence, each successive experience goes more deeply and broadly into the subjects. Each experience reinforces and extends the previous one. Curriculum practices in the arrangement of sequence of learning experiences usually based according to one of the following; chronological order, logical order and difficulty.
Semester: Autumn, 2020 Bottom-up investors are usually those who employ long-term, buy-and-hold strategies that rely strongly on fundamental analysis. This is due to the fact that a bottom-up approach to investing gives an investor a deep understanding of a single company and its stock, providing insight into an investment's long-term growth potential. Top-down investors, on the other hand, can be more opportunistic in their investment strategy, and may seek to enter and exit positions quickly to make profits off short-term market movements. Bottom-up investors can be most successful when they invest in a company they actively use and know about from the ground level. Companies such as Facebook, Google and Tesla are all good examples of this idea, because each has a well-known consumer product that can be used every day. When an investor looks at a company from a bottom-up perspective, he first inherently understands its value from the perspective of relevance to consumers in the real world. Example of a Bottom-Up Approach Facebook (NYSE: FB) is a good potential candidate for a bottom-up approach because investors intuitively understand its products and services well. Once a candidate such as Facebook is identified as a "good" company, an investor conducts a deep dive into its management and organizational structure, financial statements, marketing efforts and price per share. This would include calculating financial ratios for the company, analyzing how those figures have changed over time, and project future growth. Next, the analyst takes a step up from the individual firm and would compare Facebook's financials with that of its competitors and industry peers in the social media and internet industry. Doing so can show if Facebook stands apart from its peers or if it shows anomalies that others do not have. The next step up is to compare Facebook with the larger scope of technology companies on a relative basis. After that, general market conditions are taken into consideration, such as whether Facebook's P/E ratio is in line with the S&P 500, or whether the stock market is in a general bull market. Finally, macroeconomic data is included in the decision making, looking at trends in unemployment, inflation, interest rates, GDP growth and so on. As we've seen, bottom-up investing starts with an individual company's financials and then adds increasingly more macro layers of analysis. By contrast, a top-down investor will first examine various macro-economic factors to see how these factors may affect the overall market, and therefore the stock they are interested in investing in. They will analyze gross domestic product (GDP), the lowering or raising of interest rates, inflation and the price of commodities to see where the stock market may be headed. They will also look at the performance of the overall sector or industry that a stock is in. These investors believe that if the sector is doing well, chances are, the stocks they are examining will also do well and bring in returns. These investors may look at how outside factors such as rising oil or commodity prices or changes in interest rates will affect certain sectors over others, and therefore the companies in these sectors. Most people recognize that technology has changed the world, but few people understand the various aspects of technology and how pervasive technology is in U.S. society. Technology is commonly defined as a discipline or body of knowledge and the application of this knowledge combined with resources to produce outcomes in
Semester: Autumn, 2020 response to human desires and needs. Technology education draws its content from four universal domains: (1) sciences, (2) humanities, (3) technologies, and (4) formal knowledge. The sciences and humanities domains contain all recorded knowledge of the sciences and humanities. The technologies domain likewise contains all recorded knowledge related to the types of technology. The formal knowledge domain consists of language, linguistics, mathematics, and logic. Technology education programs are available at the elementary, middle/junior high school, and secondary levels. At the elementary school level, the focus is on technological awareness with classroom activities oriented around the development of motor skills and informed attitudes about technology's influence on society. At the middle school level, the focus of technology education programs is on exploring the applications of technology to solve problems and exploring the various technological careers. A wide variety of problem- solving situations are used, giving students opportunities to create and design. Activities are designed to further promote technological awareness and to promote psychomotor development through processes associated with technology. Secondary technology education programs are designed to give students experience related to scientific principles, engineering concepts, and technological systems. The New Vocationalism Vocationalism is defined as the method used by schools, particularly high schools, to organize their curricula so the students may develop skills, both vocational and academic, that will give them the strategic labor market advantages needed to compete for good jobs. Overall enrollment in vocational courses has fallen. However, an incoming current has brought a growing number of participants into new programs and curricula. While traditional vocational offerings have been geared toward immediate entry into specific occupations, new programs and course sequences are intended to prepare students for both colleges and careers, by combining a challenging academic curriculum with development of work-related knowledge skill. The new combination aims to keep students' options open after high school. They can go to a two-year or four-year college and then work, go to work full-time and then back to college, or engage in paid employment and further education simultaneously. The overall decline in high school vocational enrollment is evident from student transcript data. Between 1982 and 1994 the average number of vocational credits completed by high school graduates declined form 4.7 to 4.0, or from 22 percent to 16 percent of total credits earned in all subjects. The number of students who completed three or more courses in a single vocational program area slipped from 34 percent to 25 percent. Furthermore, students with disabilities, or with low grades, accounted for a growing proportion of vocational course-taking in high schools during this period. Combining a vocational sequence with college-prep academic courses seems to yield positive results. Several studies have found that high school students who combine a substantial academic curriculum with a set of vocational courses do better than students who omit either one of these two components.
Semester: Autumn, 2020 what the student is expected to learn and what the employer is expected to provide is developed. Business and marketing education programs are generally the largest sponsors of co-op education. The concept of youth apprenticeship includes preparation for postsecondary education as well as employment. Youth apprenticeship, typically designed for high school students who may go on to postsecondary education, are different from traditional apprenticeships run by unions or trade associations, that usually enroll young adults who have graduated from high school. There is a growing consensus about the principles that should guide any youth apprenticeship and about the basic design elements that differentiate youth apprenticeships from other models linking school and work. These principles include active participation of employers; integration of work-based and school-based learning; integration of academic and vocational learning; structured linkages between secondary and postsecondary institutions; and award of a broadly recognized certificate of occupational skill. The third type of work experience program is school-based enterprises. In these programs, students produce goods or services for sale or use to other people. Such enterprises include school restaurants, construction projects, child care centers, auto repair shops, hair salons, and retail stores. These programs differ from co-ops and apprenticeships in that they do not place students with employers. Rather, the goal of school-based enterprises is to allow students to apply their classroom knowledge to running real-world businesses. School-based enterprises are a viable option in communities where there are too few employers to provide sufficient jobs and training opportunities in the private sector. As the evolution toward higher technology in the work place continues, the focus of federal support for vocational education must be on redoubling efforts to increase linkages between academic and occupational skill development, secondary and postsecondary education, and business and education. Q.4 How can a teacher effectively implement the curriculum in the school. The curriculum development process systematically organizes what will be taught, who will be taught, and how it will be taught. Each component affects and interacts with other components. For example, what will be taught is affected by who is being taught (e.g., their stage of development in age, maturity, and education). Methods of how content is taught are affected by who is being taught, their characteristics, and the setting. In considering the above three essential components, the following are widely held to be essential considerations in experiential education in non-formal settings: Essential Considerations for Curriculum Development:
- issue/problem/need is identified ( issue ® what ),
- characteristics and needs of learners ( target audience ® who ),
- changes intended for learners ( intended outcomes /objectives ® what the learners will be able to do ),
- the important and relevant content ® ( what ),
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- methods to accomplish intended outcomes ® ( how ),
- evaluation strategies for methods, content, and intended outcomes ® ( What works? ). The CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT MODEL on the next page (Figure 1) shows how these components relate to each other and to the curriculum development process. It begins when an issue, concern, or problem needs to be addressed. If education or training a segment of the population will help solve the problem, then curriculum to support an educational effort becomes a priority with human and financial resources allocated. The next step is to form a curriculum develop-ment team. The team makes systematic decisions about the target audience (learner characteristics), intended out-comes (objectives), content, methods, and evaluation strategies. With input from the curriculum development team, draft curriculum products are developed, tested, evaluated, and redesigned -if necessary. When the final product is produced, volunteer training is conducted. The model shows a circular process where volunteer training provides feedback for new materials or revisions to the existing curriculum. An Example: 1n the case of population education, a need rural out-of-school youth with information on how population relates to the total environment as well as their personal lives. (Insert Curriculum Development Model here) Figure 1
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- Needs assessment: if not conducted, wonderful curriculum could be developed, but the appropriate needs of the target audience may not be met.
- Involving youth: the target audience and volunteers (or staff) who will be the implementors of the curriculum must be involved (i.e., they participate as full members of the curriculum development team).
- Recruiting and training volunteer facilitators: competent and skilled curriculum implementors are critical (the printed word cannot teach experiential group process, it doesn't provide feedback).
- Evaluating and reporting on the impact of the curriculum: is critical for securing human and financial support from key policy decision makers and for assessing whether the curriculum has achieved the intended outcome. Two types of evaluation are included in the Phases and Steps illustration: (1) Formative provides feedback during the process of developing the curriculum, and (2) Summative answers questions about changes (impact) that have occurred in learners because of their learning experiences. Summative evaluation provides evidence for what works, what does not work, and what needs to be improved. In every step of the curriculum development process, the most important task is to keep the learner (in this case, youth) in mind and involve them in process. For example, the curriculum team members, who have direct knowledge of the target audience, should be involved in conducting the needs assessment. From the needs assessment process, the problem areas are identified, gaps between what youth know and what they need to know are identified, and the scope of the problem is clarified and defined. The results may prompt decision makers to allocate resources for a curriculum development team to prepare curriculum materials. A brief description of each of the curriculum development steps is described below. After reviewing these descriptions, you should have a very clear idea of how the steps occur in each of the phases and what each step includes. PHASE I: PLANNING "Nobody plans to fail but failure results from a failure to plan." The planning phase lays the foundation for all of the curriculum development steps. The steps in this phase include: (1) Identify Issue/Problem/Need ↪ (2) Form Curriculum Development Team ↪ (3) Conduct Needs Assessment and Analysis
Semester: Autumn, 2020 (1) Identify Issue/Problem/Need The need for curriculum development usually emerges from a concern about a major issue or problem of one or more target audience. This section explores some of the questions that need to be addressed to define the issue and to develop a statement that will guide the selection of the members of a curriculum development team. The issue statement also serves to broadly identify, the scope (what will be included) of the curriculum content. (2) Form Curriculum Development Team Once the nature and scope of the issue has been broadly defined, the members of the curriculum development team can be selected. Topics covered in this section include: (1) the roles and functions of team members, (2) a process for selecting members of the curriculum development team, and (3) principles of collaboration and teamwork. The goal is to obtain expertise for the areas included in the scope of the curriculum content among the team members and develop an effective team. (3) Conduct Needs Assessment and Analysis There are two phases in the needs assessment process. The first is procedures for conducting a needs assessment. A number of techniques are aimed toward learning what is needed and by whom relative to the identified issue. Techniques covered in this section include: KAP - Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Survey; focus groups; and environmental scanning. Analysis, the second part of this needs assessment step, describes techniques on how to use the data and the results of the information gathered. Included are: ways to identify gaps between knowledge and practice; trends emerging from the data; a process to prioritize needs; and identification of the characteristics of the target audience. "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree" PHASE II: CONTENT AND METHODS Phase II determines intended outcomes (what learners will be able to do after participation in curriculum activities), the content (what will be taught), and the methods (how it will be taught). Steps include: (4) State Intended Outcomes ↪ (5) Select Content ↪ (6) Design Experiential Methods (4) State Intended Outcomes Once the issue is defined, the curriculum team is formed, the needs assessed, analyzed and prioritized, the next step is to refine and restate the issue, if needed, and develop the intended outcomes or educational objectives. An intended outcome states what the learner will be able to do as a result of participating in the curriculum activities.
Semester: Autumn, 2020 (8) Test and Revise Curriculum This step includes suggestions to select test sites and conduct a formative evaluation of curriculum materials during the production phase. A sample evaluation form is provided. (9) Recruit and Train Facilitators It is a waste of resources to develop curriculum materials if adequate training is not provided for facilitators to implement it. Suggestions for recruiting appropriate facilitators are provided with a sample three-day training program. (10) Implement Curriculum Effective implementation of newly developed curriculum products is unlikely to occur without planning. Strategies to promote and use the curriculum are discussed in this step. PHASE IV: EVALUATION AND REPORTING (11) Design Evaluation Strategies ↪ (12) Reporting and Securing Resources (11) Design Evaluation Strategies Evaluation is a phase in the curriculum development model as well as a specific step. Two types of evaluation, formative and summative, are used during curriculum development. Formative evaluations are used during the needs assessment, product development, and testing steps. Summative evaluations are undertaken to measure and report on the outcomes of the curriculum. This step reviews evaluation strategies and suggests simple procedures to produce valid and reliable information. A series of questions are posed to guide the summative evaluation process and a sample evaluation format is suggested. (12) Reporting and Securing Resources The final element in an evaluation strategy is "delivering the pay off (i.e., getting the results into the hands of people who can use them). In this step, suggestions for what and how to report to key shareholders, especially funding and policy decision makers, are provided and a brief discussion on how to secure resources for additional programming. Q.5 Discuss the problemsand issues in curriculum implemenation in Pakistan. It is mandated in the Constitution of Pakistan to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of 5-16 years and enhance adult literacy. With the 18th constitutional amendment the concurrent list which comprised of 47 subjects was abolished and these subjects, including education, were transferred to federating units as a move towards provincial autonomy. The year 2015 is important in the context that it marks the deadline for the participants of Dakar declaration (Education For All [EFA] commitment) including Pakistan. Education related statistics coupled with Pakistan’s progress regarding education targets set in Vision 2030 and Pakistan’s lagging behind in achieving EFA targets
Semester: Autumn, 2020 and its Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) for education call for an analysis of the education system of Pakistan and to look into the issues and problems it is facing so that workable solutions could be recommended. What is Education System? The system of education includes all institutions that are involved in delivering formal education (public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, onsite or virtual instruction) and their faculties, students, physical infrastructure, resources and rules. In a broader definition the system also includes the institutions that are directly involved in financing, managing, operating or regulating such institutions (like government ministries and regulatory bodies, central testing organizations, textbook boards and accreditation boards). The rules and regulations that guide the individual and institutional interactions within the set up are also part of the education system. Education system of Pakistan: The education system of Pakistan is comprised of 260,903 institutions and is facilitating 41,018,384 students with the help of 1,535,461 teachers. The system includes 180,846 public institutions and 80,057 private institutions. Hence 31% educational institutes are run by private sector while 69% are public institutes. Analysis of education system in Pakistan Pakistan has expressed its commitment to promote education and literacy in the country by education policies at domestic level and getting involved into international commitments on education. In this regard national education policies are the visions which suggest strategies to increase literacy rate, capacity building, and enhance facilities in the schools and educational institutes. MDGs and EFA programmes are global commitments of Pakistan for the promotion of literacy. A review of the education system of Pakistan suggests that there has been little change in Pakistan’s schools since 2010, when the 18th Amendment enshrined education as a fundamental human right in the constitution. Problems of access, quality, infrastructure and inequality of opportunity, remain endemic. Issues A) MDGs and Pakistan Due to the problems in education system of Pakistan, the country is lagging behind in achieving its MDGs of education. The MDGs have laid down two goals for education sector: Goal 2 : The goal 2 of MDGs is to achieve Universal Primary Education (UPE) and by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. By the year 2014 the enrolment statistics show an increase in the enrolment of students of the age of 3-16 year while dropout rate
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- Lack of Proper Planning:** Pakistan is a signatory to MDGs and EFA goals. However it seems that it will not be able to achieve these international commitments because of financial management issues and constraints to achieve the MDGs and EFA goals. 2) Social constraints: It is important to realize that the problems which hinder the provision of education are not just due to issues of management by government but some of them are deeply rooted in the social and cultural orientation of the people. Overcoming the latter is difficult and would require a change in attitude of the people, until then universal primary education is difficult to achieve. 3) Gender gap: Major factors that hinder enrolment rates of girls include poverty, cultural constraints, illiteracy of parents and parental concerns about safety and mobility of their daughters. Society’s emphasis on girl’s modesty, protection and early marriages may limit family’s willingness to send them to school. Enrolment of rural girls is 45% lower than that of urban girls; while for boys the difference is 10% only, showing that gender gap is an important factor. 4) Cost of education: The economic cost is higher in private schools, but these are located in richer settlements only. The paradox is that private schools are better but not everywhere and government schools ensure equitable access but do not provide quality education. 5) War on Terror: Pakistan’s engagement in war against terrorism also affected the promotion of literacy campaign. The militants targeted schools and students; several educational institutions were blown up, teachers and students were killed in Balochistan, KPK and FATA. This may have to contribute not as much as other factors, but this remains an important factor. 6) Funds for Education: Pakistan spends 2.4% GDP on education. At national level, 89% education expenditure comprises of current expenses such as teachers’ salaries, while only 11% comprises of development expenditure which is not sufficient to raise quality of education. 7) Technical Education: Sufficient attention has not been paid to the technical and vocational education in Pakistan. The number of technical and vocational training institutes is not sufficient and many are deprived of infrastructure, teachers and tools for training. The population of a state is one of the main elements of its national power. It can become an asset once it is skilled. Unskilled population means more jobless people in the country, which affects the national development negatively. Therefore, technical education needs priority handling by the government. Poverty, law and order situation, natural disasters, budgetary constraints, lack of access, poor quality, equity, and governance have also contributed in less enrolments. An analysis of the issues and problems suggest that: The official data shows the allocation of funds for educational projects but there is no mechanism which ensures the proper expenditure of those funds on education. The existing infrastructure is not being properly utilized in several parts of the country.
Semester: Autumn, 2020 There are various challenges that include expertise, institutional and capacity issues, forging national cohesion, uniform standards for textbook development, and quality assurance. The faculty hiring process is historically known to be politicized. It is because of this that the quality of teaching suffers and even more so when low investments are made in teachers’ training. As a result teachers are not regular and their time at school is not as productive as it would be with a well-trained teacher. Inside schools there are challenges which include shortage of teachers, teacher absenteeism, missing basic facilities and lack of friendly environment. Out of school challenges include shortage of schools, distance – especially for females, insecurity, poverty, cultural norms, parents are reluctant or parents lack awareness. Solutions There is a need for implementation of national education policy and vision 2030 education goals. An analysis of education policy suggests that at the policy level there are several admirable ideas, but practically there are some shortcomings also. It may not be possible for the government at the moment to implement uniform education system in the country, but a uniform curriculum can be introduced in educational institutes of the country. This will provide equal opportunity to the students of rural areas to compete with students of urban areas in the job market. Since majority of Pakistani population resides in rural areas and the access to education is a major problem for them, it seems feasible that a balanced approach for formal and informal education be adopted. Government as well as non-government sector should work together to promote education in rural areas. The government should take measures to get school buildings vacated which are occupied by feudal lords of Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab. Efforts should be made to ensure that proper education is provided in those schools. The federal government is paying attention to the vocational and technical training, but it is important to make the already existing vocational and technical training centres more efficient so that skilled youth could be produced. Since education is a provincial subject, the provincial education secretariats need to be strengthened. Special policy planning units should be established in provinces’ education departments for implementation of educational policies and formulation of new policies whenever needed. The provincial education departments need to work out financial resources required for realising the compliance of Article 25-A. Federal Government should play a supportive role vis-à-vis the provinces for the early compliance of the constitutional obligation laid down in Article 25-A. Special grants can be provided to the provinces where the literacy rate is low. Pakistan is not the only country which is facing challenges regarding promotion of literacy and meeting EFA and MDGs commitments. Education remains a subject which is paid least attention in the whole South Asian region. UNDP report 2014 suggests that there has been an improvement in other elements of human
