In the last few days I had the opportunity of visiting a few primary and secondary schools, some in rural areas, and from across Pakistan (Charsadda, Peshawar, Karachi, and Hyderabad) and had numerous interactions with teachers from the public and the private/NGO sectors.
Within a few minutes of entering a school one can tell whether the school is happening and working or not. There is a buzz in a happening school. The students are busy and involved. Children show their mental states quite readily. If they are bored or not involved, it is easy to see that. The involvement of the teachers, their readiness to talk about what is happening in class, and their eagerness to show the work of their students says all. These schools are organised, ordered, clean and have a look of having been taken care of. They might be small and under provided but they do have the look and feel of being places where children are welcome and where education, as play, interaction and learning, takes place.
The schools that were not working were mostly public schools. The buildings were dirty and drab, uncared for, with a forlorn atmosphere. The classrooms were dark and dingy. The surrounding areas were horrible: in one case there was a pool of stagnant, smelly and green water nearby and garbage heaps all around, and smell of human and animal feces. Clearly the place is not very inviting for children, or teachers for that matter. The children appeared bored and sometimes even day-dreaming. There was a feel that a lot of children, and teachers, were just wasting time there. And the story of teachers was unsurprisingly about lack of empowerment and facilities. There was no excitement, of learning and exploring, in these places.
Some of the private/NGO schools were not in large spaces either. And some did not have trained teachers even, and one school, giving free education to children from extremely marginalised communities, even had difficulty making ends meet every month, and relied a lot on volunteers from the community around to come in and teach as and when they could, but still, these schools had, clearly, captured the interest of these children. The children were happy to be there and looked forward to being there every morning.
All schools had no electricity for extended periods. Although this is only April, it was still hot and uncomfortable in some classrooms. One can only imagine what it must be like for students in May/June. Some of the NGO schools, especially the custom built ones, had large windows in every room. In these schools despite lack of electricity there was light and air, at least for now, and the children were comfortable and the ambiance quite cheerful. But again, for whatever reasons of the state, the windows are small in public schools and they were mostly shut (maybe administration was afraid of robberies). The rooms, resultantly, looked dark and felt airless. Given that we are probably going to continue to face an energy crisis for many years to come, maybe it would be a good idea for provincial governments to re-design what future school buildings should look like. Even for existing ones the possibility of making larger windows in classrooms should be looked at.
I am sure the teachers and the students of the non-happening schools that we saw must dread the idea of coming to that school every morning, day in and day out. What do they have to look forward to? Another day of drudgery, and for all concerned.
It is true that public school teachers have very poor incentives and support structures to back them. They have too many other duties that get assigned to them (census duty, election duty, polio drive, inoculation duty, flood duty), they are not answerable to the local communities and/or parents, they cannot even be effectively disciplined by head teachers, and there is too much political interference in their hiring, placements, transfers, and promotions. Most importantly, they are not duly acknowledged by our state and society as people who are involved in the crucial work of shaping the future of this country.
But still, there was far too much apathy in the public school teachers that I met. They were willing to sit in dirty classrooms and dirty surroundings, complaining about the lack of appointment of a sweeper for the school, but were not willing to work themselves or with their students to clean up their rooms and the surrounding area. Most of the teachers I met had far too resigned an attitude. It has already been acknowledged that they work in extremely challenging circumstances but somehow the non-happening schools gave the impression that the administration and staff in those schools were also not doing what they could to address some of the things. It definitely does not require too much money to clean the classroom, put bright posters on the walls and so on. And even these small changes can enliven classrooms substantially.
Education is not about rote learning and transferring information, it is about the joy of discovery and acquiring understanding and excitement and involvement in the learning process, both for the teacher and the student. That was the main difference, between the schools that worked and ones that did not, at least in the small sample that I saw. Clearly education needs major institutional and organisational reforms, and it needs a lot more resources too. And this should not be underestimated. But there are things that can be done at the school level, without a lot of resources, that could create a much better learning environment for children and the teachers. But that needs involvement and excitement. And it has to come from the teachers before it catches the students.
The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at fbari@sorosny.org