Independent Monitoring Unit (IMU) Elementary and Secondary education department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The key challenges to education in K-P, like in the other provinces and regions of the country, are access, quality, equity and governance. To improve these areas of the education sector, the government of K-P took substantive measures through policy and sector reforms.

Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has developed and approved Education Sector Plan and Roadmap to achieve the objectives of quality education in the Province. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Sector Programme (KESP) and Reform Roadmap covers critical areas of interventions and require independent monitoring on monthly basis to track progress on each of the key performance indicators and communicate findings to the Department enabling it take corrective measures at all levels. Independence of the Unit is of prime importance as the success of the KESP and Roadmap depend on objective,

independent, and timely reporting on all indicators covering 28,583 government schools in the Province. The Elementary and Secondary Education Department of K-P, is evidently determined to increase access to quality education. The rolling out of enrolment campaigns, assessment of teachers’ capacities, rationalization of the teaching staff, provision of the missing facilities in government schools and initiation of students’ assessment mechanisms, are a few of the critical steps taken to provide a better education environment for the community at large.

The objectives of the project are directly related with the overall objectives of the education sector plan and the roadmap already approved by the chief minister. It aims to put in place a robust monitoring mechanism that would support and ensure improvement in access, quality and particularly governance in the education sector. It is being implemented by elementary and secondary education department. The monitoring mechanism is required to look at dynamic data sets which regulate the performance of the education system at district and subsequently at the provincial level.

Sources in the Independent Monitoring Unit (IMU) of education department said that the project proved useful in provision of timely and accurate data to the directorate and secretariat of education for corrective measures.

The key objectives are as follows:

Provide Elementary & Secondary Education Department and its development partners with a viable means of ensuring that education sector reforms are efficiently developed and effectively implemented

1.    Support the establishment of performance monitoring mechanisms

2.    Deliver objective information on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis to donors, civil society, parents and other stakeholder for reviewing the performance of government and its officials

3.    Increase public awareness of the status of school facilities and infrastructure and the level of education service delivery in the province, district and the school level

4.    Provide access to information on key indicators to increase social accountability

5.    Increase social accountability to improve governance, service delivery outcomes, planning and resource allocations to the sector

Specific tasks relating to IMU:

1.    IMU is responsible for ensuring that data for all key performance indicators are collected regularly on monthly basis and uploaded using Smartphone

2.    Once collected data will be analyzed for the purpose of performance evaluation

3.    Next, the data is presented, in an agreed format, to all relevant offices of the education department

4.    IMU will be responsible for ensuring accuracy and timely provision of data. It will also be required to randomly select a sample of schools to visit across various Districts in order to ensure accuracy of data. It will develop reports on remedial measures for data inconsistency, etc

It is important to note that K-P has fared well on these indicators, despite the volatile security situation, which is not as challenging in other provinces and once that is also improved, K-P will shine further in its educational achievements.

Pakistan’s education system ensures rich will stay rich or get richer

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is sustaining an education system in which the rich will stay rich, or get richer, and the poor will have an ever-shrinking chance for social mobility, a new study shows.

The study, “Who Gets the Good Jobs, was conducted by Alif Ailaan and Society for the Advancement of Education (SAHE).

It says education available to children from wealthy families results in the best economic opportunities and job outcomes, whilst simultaneously denying the children of less privileged families with a free or low cost education that can help them to leapfrog the socio-economic barriers to a better life that they must contend with from the get-go.

It assessed jobs in the top national statistics socioeconomic classification, including banking, services, textile, telecom, pharmaceuticals, etc., from 828 respondents, with 702 males and 126 females from Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

“Our survey found that two of the biggest determinants of salary levels in the country are exposure to the English language, and whether one took O and/or A levels exams or not,” Mosharraf Zaidi, campaign director of Alif Ailaan, wrote in the report.

“The market speaks clearly: parents without economic means are being told that without an O and/or A levels certification, and without the ability to engage in the English language, your children’s prospects to get the highest paying and best jobs are limited.

“What then would incentivise those same parents to invest the money, time and effort to educate their children—especially when alternatives to schooling may include labour that adds to their household income?”

The study found that, on average, those who attended private schools earned almost Rs 40,000 more.

The report put the earnings gap down to the factor such as the type of schooling — Cambridge/O-A levels or matriculation systems.

The research also found the salaries of privately-educated employees increased more quickly. The survey covered 105 private sector organisations and attempted to explore the link between schooling and job prospects by examining educational backgrounds and how it translates into prosperous or average position in the market.

This study attempts to explore the link between schooling and job prospects by examining the schooling backgrounds, and profiles of mid and senior level managers in reputable firms in the three main urban centres in the country.

Findings

“Our findings suggest that the education system in Pakistan is reproducing existing patterns of distribution of wealth and well-being. If you do not have the privileges needed to enjoy good economic opportunities, the education system does nothing to help change that for the next generation,” it says.

“Access to quality education is based on ability to pay for it. The rich have ready access to schools that consistently produce people with higher salaries in mid and senior level jobs in the formal market.”

Lower-middle income and poorer households have access only to an education that produces people with lower salaries., it said, adding that the probability of success for children from poorer backgrounds is engineered to be lower.

Specific findings

It states that three key factors have the most impact on starting salary outcomes – school support, support at home and exposure to English.

Employees who were students at private top tier schools score the highest for each of these three critical factors for high starting salary. They are followed by those who were students at government top tier schools and private mid tier schools, which rank fairly high on all three factors. Unsurprisingly, government low tier schools ranked the lowest. In terms of home support, parent income and home environment appear to be key factors and exposure to English is likely to be as much a function of the home as the school setting.

Aside from the quality of school as a factor for people who ended up with higher starting salaries, it also found that they tended to have upper-middle and higher income parents who were able to provide more home support for them as children. Their parents were likely to have higher levels of education and their siblings were likely to be educated as well. Of the employees we interviewed, those who had started their careers with higher salaries were most likely to have had more books around the house, parents who expected them to do well in school and they were most likely to be able to take better quality tuitions if they had ever needed it.

Private top tier schools make a significant difference People who went to private top tier schools have a significant advantage when it comes to the salary they will start their career with. In fact, average starting salary goes up with the number of years one was in a private top tier school. This applied to whether the student went to one such school or more than one starting from pre-primary.

There isn’t much of a starting salary difference between government low tier and private low tier schools It was found that there is only a small difference in a person’s starting salary if they went to a government or private low tier school.

This means that it is worth taking a closer look at the belief that these mainstream private schools are providing a much better quality education than government schools. Less significantly, we also found that if you went to a government top tier or a private mid tier school there will only be a small difference in your starting salary.

Within the context of top tier schools O’ and A’ Levels give you a major starting salary advantage.

The type of school-leaving examinations taken at the secondary and higher secondary levels matter the most when it comes to person’s starting salary. The average salary for an O’ Level graduate is more than twice of a Matriculate and the same is true of A’ Levels versus a regular Intermediate from a Pakistani examination board. – 

(Thanks SAMAA TV)

Education in Government Sector

Education is the most essential ingredient for the development of a nation. It is a global fact that nations who have reached the heights of the development and prosperity have done it by using education and information as a tool to do it. Education is simply an investment to achieve both human and economic development.But unfortunately it is one of the biggest problems in Pakistan.The issues lead to the comprehension of the problems which are faced in the development of education system and promotion of literacy. The study outlines seven major problems such as: 1) Lack of Proper Planning: Pakistan is a signatory to MDGs and EFA goals.

The education system in Pakistan is generally divided into six levels: Preschool (for the age from 3 to 5 years); primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate or SSC); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary (School) Certificate or HSC); and university programs leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees

In Human Development Report Pakistan is placed at 136th position for having just 49.9% educated population. In addition to that, Pakistan is ranked at 113th out of 120 registered UN members according to the research conducted by UNESCO et al. Some of the very basic flaws of the education system in Pakistan contribute to the economic, ethnic and sociopolitical crisis within the country.

Moreover, the quality of education in most of the public schools and colleges is well below par; the teachers in government schools are not well trained. People who do not get job in any other sector, they try their luck in educational system. They are not professionally trained teachers so they are unable to train a nation. Quality of teaching needs special attention in rural areas where the teachers lack in all departments.

  PROBLEMS OF EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN

1. Medium of Education:

2. Disparity of System at Provincial Level:

3. Gender Discrimination:

4. Lack of Technical Education::

5. Low allocation of funds:

6. Inefficient Teachers:

7. Poverty:

8. Corruption:

9. Social imbalance:

10. Mismanagement of System:

11. Infrastructure Problems:

12. Private school system:

13. Lack of educational policies:

14. Increase in population:

15. Lack of attention of the authorities:

16. Lack of uniform educational system:

17. Medium of Instruction:

18. Education as a business:

19. Delay in renewal of policies and syllabus

20. Political Interference: