Yet another look at education
IT is encouraging that the importance of updating and revising the National Education Policy 1998-2010 (NEP) is understood by the government. It is also a welcome measure that this is being undertaken on a war-footing , as we are given to understand. As the government is in the process of reviewing the NEP, it would do well to recall that the Musharraf regime had also constituted a policy review team in September 2005, with the mandate to undertake the revision exercise. The review team issued a White Paper in December 2006 which evidently did not win the approval of the education ministry bosses at the time. Hence the report was shelved. The present government has announced that the revised policy it is preparing will be known as the NEP-2008 and will be announced before the end of the year after it receives input from all four provinces. The need for revision can be attributed to the shortcomings of the education sector that the last policy prepared by Nawaz Sharif's government failed to rectify. The latest revision exercise notwithstanding, skepticism abounds. The entire exercise implores some questions owing to the checkered history of such undertakings in the past. They have generally failed to produce results. As a result such exercises have proved to be futile. Where does the fault lie? Does it lie in the recommendations which were put forward or in the implementation process? More often than not the problem has been with the lack of political will to implement the recommendations.
The last review addressed some vital aspects of the education sector such as the pillars of quality including the curriculum - and its relevance - textbooks, assessment, teachers training and learning environment; gender equity; accessibility; education financing; political interference and corruption; and parallel systems
in education. But the fact that these recommendations were shelved and never considered seriously points to the underlying factor of failure of implementation. Reviewing policies is a protracted process which requires financial resources and experts. It is a time-consuming job which should only be undertaken if it can improve ongoing reforms. Failure to get the desired results may call for a revision of the recommendations but that should not be such a challenge. The government should consider taking up the White Paper on education which is still relevant to our conditions. It was prepared less than two years ago. It offers a major advantage. The implementation process can be started right away without delay. Dawn
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