POST-PANDEMIC AND THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN PAKISTAN

Pre-Pandemic Education System

In the developing countries, the existing system comprises of some complexities and limitations. Especially, when we talk about the public sector in Pakistan there are numerous issues related to the infrastructure and teaching techniques. Teaching methodology usually focusing the rot-memorization and content-oriented. The teaching approaches mostly round the stick but not even uses a single carrot approach while convincing the students.  This is one of the reasons in which students are not fascinating enough towards the Public institutions that, on the other hand, may cause a reason for keeping students away from early schooling. There are plenty of schools in Pakistan that have not accessible for students to catch the class and teacher's attendance is not schedule as given by the concerned authority. In such schools, there is also a lack of assessment of both, teachers and students, that ultimately producing low caliber students in society. As for job is concerned, the education sector is flourishing day and night with an increasing number of schools at each corner of the street. Both, the private and public are offering jobs mostly on political basis or bribes during hiring. Whosoever offers a high amount of money can hire a big slot in Public educational institutions. There are rare cases where to conduct an entry test for applicants that will be reduced after the pandemic.

  

Post-Pandemic and our Education System

This pandemic has made us all realize that all those hours spent in school and colleges are more or less equal to nothing, five days each of 6-8 hour classes was just an obligation. The lectures were not creative rather mundane. The pandemic has finally made us all realize what is more important and what is not. Going forward schools and colleges should adopt a new system of education by discarding all those routine, mundane, and dull classroom lectures.

Education these days, like most aspects of human life on the planet, is undergoing a period of critical transition. The traditional classroom has been replaced with a virtual one, school uniform has been out fashioned for comfy PJs, and writing assignments no more require pen and paper. This unexpected change in everyday life has come within four months of the virus first being reported in China and never did we think living would come to this. For the first time in recent history that we are experiencing a lockdown of global proportions and perhaps it is the first time that the flow of education has been disrupted to this extent. The UNICEF estimates that close to 1.5 billion schoolchildren around the world face loss of learning as schools in over 191 countries have been ordered shut to prevent the spread of Covid-19. The long term impact of the virus-driven lockdown is yet to be fully understood, however, one thing is clear, that it is high time we rethink what education truly entails. 

COVID-19, an Opportunity for a Resilience Education System 

It has been reported in the country that the teachers in Public schools can not use even the basics of the internet and other applications, during the pandemic. In the pre-pandemic schools, teachers serving off-camera and were not bound for teaching students along with parents face to face at home. Even, most parents have no such mechanism for measuring the educators and now are coming across new experiences where they easily see and check their teaching techniques and cheating, as well. Overall, such a drastic change in our education infrastructure was important before the pandemic but we assume the COVID-19 as an opportunity for such nations to develop and enhance their traditional systems.  

For the Post-Pandemic, a change should come for building resilience within the education system and its beneficiaries. Resilience is defined as the ability of systems, communities, and countries to manage, mitigate and recover from disasters and conflicts in such a way that the threat of chronic vulnerability is reduced and growth is facilitated. The education and the communities’ ability to weather most crises are strongly interlinked. COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that there is a critical need to build resilience within the Pakistani education system. The current situation is a clear indication of how the country is unprepared to continue the seamless delivery of education during a health crisis or any crisis for that matter.

Our universities must also up their credentials when it comes to providing infrastructure that supports crossing over to the online world. Finally, faculty members must be removed from the pedestal of prestige they are put on irrespective of their performance and should be treated as professionals who are expected to show sustainable results. There have been reports of teachers putting up strong opposition to moving classes online amid the lockdowns because it required more effort than the bare minimum they have been serving up for years and stepping out of the comfort zones they have gotten used to. Though it is true that teaching is one of the noblest of professions, that respect must be reserved for those who do justice to the role, not to those who demand it simply by virtue of being part of the teaching community.

Should the government of Pakistan introduce online education during the post-pandemic or not? 

The above discussion presents a mixed scenario that an online education system carries its advantages and disadvantages in a country. It depends upon the existing infrastructure, teaching faculty, building, and types of equipment in a school. 

As schools and colleges are shut, education has shifted from the four walls of a classroom to phone and laptop screens. On the face of it, it has helped institutions to continue with the curriculum even during the lockdown. But online education has also brought to light the widening gaps between class and caste, as many students don’t have access to e-resources (computers, laptops, internet connectivity) to be able to attend classes from home. More so, some students don’t have a healthy environment at home which further causes a hindrance.

In the post-pandemic world, there may be a shift in admission trends, where a lot of parents, due to lack of savings, would prefer government school over private. The government can use this as a good opportunity to improve the public education system and aim to make it more egalitarian.

Conclusion

The COVID crisis as another event that reminds us to be worried about our education system. It is an opportunity to examine where we have gotten to in the past few decades and weed out the mistakes we have made along the way. The crisis and its management by authorities have manifested what many knew all along; that our education system is in shambles. One would not be mistaken to say that Pakistan is lagging far behind when it comes to traditional education, and we really should not be even talking about online education when over 32% primary schools in rural areas of Pakistan do not have toilets and 32.2% of all primary schools in Pakistan do not have drinking water. What we need is to ask the following question in earnest. 

Question:

Should the government of Pakistan continue online education practices further or not?

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