Uniform curriculum and madrasas in Pakistan
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Well before taking the reins of power, Prime Minister Imran Khan attacked the current triple-tracked educational system that in views of many has produced social "apartheid." The public, the private and the madrasas are three types of educational institutions that have operated parallel to one another for decades, and even for centuries. They enroll pupils from different economic classes and layers of society.
The most advantaged, the rich, upper classes send their children to upscale, expensive English medium schools. Tens of thousands of these schools use curriculum designed by university boards in Britain and prepare them for their examinations. By all evidence, they produce the best quality of students who after high school study at elite private universities at home or take admission in foreign colleges. This is the way elite classes in Pakistan transfer social and economic dominance to their new generations by providing them better quality education.
The poor and lower middle classes have the public-school option or that of low-fee private schools that is even worse than the former. Pakistan maintains 260,000 schools that have currently 25 million children on their rolls. Leave the quality and facilities aside, overcrowded and understaffed, as they are, they lack capacity to take in 22.8 million out-of-school children. These institutions offer national curriculum that has kept changing under different regimes.
Madrasas offer the third stream of education that has been the center of Islamic learning for centuries in this part of the world. They are autonomous and funded privately by charities, trusts and individuals. By official figures, the country has 35 registered and unregistered madrasas where 3 million students at different level are enrolled.
For decades, intellectuals, politicians and educationists have debated the issue of national curriculum — one system for all. So far, every effort to make progress towards that goal has shattered on the hard rock of resistance from the two extremes — the elite private schools and madrasas. One takes shelter in the liberal idea of choice and the other in the argument of keeping Islamic learning, practices and heritage alive.
Where others have failed, Imran Khan wants to succeed by fulfilling one of his many election promises — a uniform national curriculum. The motto "one nation, one curriculum" appears to attract conservative, nationalist constituencies and those who would like to see public education get better in quality and access. However, there is a greater promise for madrasa institutions and graduates in the new uniform curriculum.
Rasul Bakhsh Rais
At the center of the debate are questions of equal educational opportunity, justice and fair chance to all to succeed in the job market. The critique of the class-oriented education system is valid, but building a national consensus, exercising political will and mobilizing material and human resources have been a big challenge.
Where others have failed, Imran Khan wants to succeed by fulfilling one of his many election promises — a uniform national curriculum. The motto "one nation, one curriculum" appears to attract conservative, nationalist constituencies and those who would like to see public education getting better in quality and access. However, there is a greater promise for madrasa institutions and graduates in the new uniform curriculum.
We all know mere religious education doesn’t prepare them for the modern job market. The new policy offers them incentives if they embrace the uniform curriculum, which would require them to teach English, math, natural sciences and social studies and sit for government-run boards for examinations. For this purpose, the government will assign at least three teachers to each madrasa with full pay and benefits. Religious seminaries in fact have never been averse to including contemporary subjects and disciplines in their curriculum. They have facilitated and encouraged their students to take board and university examinations. Thousands of such students do so each year and even obtain higher university degrees later.
Another important benefit promised in the new policy is teaching jobs for madrasa graduates at public schools. They will be eligible to teach Islamic studies, and every school will hire two teachers in this category. Whether the federal and the provincial governments will be able recruit hundreds of thousands of new teachers is a million-dollar question.
The drive for a uniform national curriculum, raising the standards of public education and mainstreaming madrasas seems to have picked up under Imran Khan. The plan is to start implementing it from early next year from grade one to five, and then gradually move it to class twelve.
The government claims it has secured the understanding of madrasa alliances of various denominations that they would gradually enforce it within the next five years. This time around, the government faces resistance from the elite, private English medium schools that see a big loss to their educational business. They have material resources and social influence to thwart the effort, as they have done before.
The reform agenda has bigger objectives — national uniformity, fighting intolerance and extremism, and giving fair chance to all classes of children to succeed in life. One has yet to see how these lofty goals would be achieved in a climate of political instability, bad economy and unending political feuds.
– Rasul Bakhsh Rais is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS, Lahore. His latest book is “Islam, Ethnicity and Power Politics: Constructing Pakistan’s National Identity” (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Twitter: @RasulRais
