Flawed education system hampering innovation among students

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By: BILAL KANJAL

Rote learning being one of the culprits

 

Pakistan’s flawed education system is creating serious problems for the students in the education field. The improvement in the standard and quality of education in Pakistan seems like a dream that will never come true. Rote learning, lack of practical approach and paucity of creativity are few factors responsible for the failure of the education system.

Pakistani education system has failed to improve and to compete with the international education system. Pakistan Today asked the leading educationists about what is it that ails it.

Quaid-e-Azam University’s PhD scholar Dr Saadat Bilal said that the lacking of unique curriculum/syllabus has set back our education system. “Lack of uniformity in the syllabus is there at every level (primary, middle, secondary or high) in private as well as the government sector in the education field.”

The language barrier is another major problem of the education system. Two different languages are used for primary and secondary level, Dr Bilal added.

Quaid-e-Azam University’s Assistant professor Dr Nadeem Mirza said that first education system needed to be divided into three sections: Primary, secondary and higher education.

“There exists a general perception among the population about the secondary education, specifically about the government schools that it is based on the rote learning, while such a perception does not exist for the primary and higher education. The Punjab government has been trying since past decade to transform the secondary education system by drastically changing the examination system – one example is the introduction of a higher percentage of objective type questions in the final exams as compared to the subjective type questions,” said Dr Mirza.

Dr Mirza added that by this move the government has tried to curb the rote learning, yet the people have introduced certain new methods to tackle this issue – presence of many types of test-papers in the market is one such example, while the higher education is much better than primary and secondary level because at this level the rote learning is not possible. Specifically, since the establishment of the higher education commission, the standard of education at this level has improved a lot.

He, while responding to another question, said that there should be a standardised system of education in every province of Pakistan.

Incentives for the teachers at the governmental schools should be increased, so that they may focus on teaching at the schools instead of opening the private tuition centres.

Every effort should be made to bring the government schools at par the private schools.

The Education Ministry should be run by the experts and the technocrats.

Awareness programmes should be organised for the students and teacher training programmes should be offered to all the teachers belonging to the primary and secondary education systems.

Moreover, pressure is also exerted on policy makers in the education sector, Pakistan Today observed.

When contacted Afzal Thori, ex-principal of Punjab Groups of colleges he told Pakistan Today in response to a question that teachers are responsible for ratta system. Students will learn whatever they are taught by the teachers.

After repeated attempts and wait of two days, CADD Spokesperson Atique Rehman didn’t respond to queries of Pakistan Today.

 

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