EDUCATION POLICIES AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS

ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on various education policies in Pakistan as well as their poor
implementation. It also puts light on education in private schools. The study looks
at different aspects of private schools such as school management, school
environment, teacher qualification and training and extra-curricular activities in
schools.
The main sources of data include personal experiences as well as in-depth
interviews of various participants such as students, teachers, parents, education
officers etc. Also additional data from various research journals based on relevant
studies was also gathered.
The analysis reveals that poorly produced and inadequate implementation of
education policies is the major cause of illiteracy.
The study indicates that education in private schools is far better than that in
public schools. Main reason of this is more supplemental and advanced curricula
being taught in private schools.

INTRODUCTION
South Asia is considered the most illiterate part of the world. Pakistan’s literacy
rate is the lowest among South Asian countries as reported by a World Bank report
and its female literacy rate is lowest in the world (World Bank 2000). Pakistan,
Vietnam and India, at the eve of millennium, differed greatly in their literacy rates.
Vietnam attained literacy rate of 93%, Pakistan’s literacy rate however was 45%
compared to India which had a literacy rate of 56%. Thus India achieved 115th
position in world ranking whereas Pakistan achieved 127th position with re4spect
to HDI (UNDP, 2001).
EDUCATION POLICIES:
In 1947 the first education conference declared primary education to be free,
compulsory and universalized. However, this target has not been achieved till now.
Major issue is that government sets up various unrealistic targets which are then
changed in the future. UPE has been the center of attention of every government.
1967 UPE target as changed in 1970 which was again replaced by a new target in
1980. This UPE target was further changed in 1972 and 1979 was set as the target
year for boys and 1984 for girls. It was again not achieved and so a new target date
of 2002 was set. Since these strategies are never implemented this leads to a poor
education system. In the educational policy of 1979, it was suggested that mosque
schools should be opened. It was a successful approach towards primary education
of children but due to poor administration this plan has never been implemented.
Many other programs have also been established to improve the literacy rate but
were discontinued due to the change of government. In 1987 Nai Roshni program
was launched which was discontinued in 1989 due to change of government. In
1950 Village-AID literacy component was established. It was closed in 1960 due to
change of government.
FIVE YEAR DEVELOPMENTAL PLAN:
It also followed a similar pattern. Here also target for achievement of UPE was
unrealistic and target dates were extended again and again. In Pakistan Education
Conference 1947, 1967 was set as target date for UPE. This was extended in first
five year plan to 1975. These extensions continued till Seventh five year plan (1988-
93) and National Education policy 1992. In 1992 the target was again extended to
2002.
PRIVATE SCHOOLS:
Private sectors are majorly contributing to the literacy rate of Pakistan. In 2000
private sector was providing education to about 6 million children. It increased to
12 million in 2007-08. Low fee private schools are providing primary education to
millions of children. They have also forced governments to make new educational
policies. Since parents don’t trust public sectors to provide quality education to
their children, the interest in private schools is greatly increasing. Along with this
the responsibility is also increasing upon private sector.
Following are the findings from household survey data from 2010/11:
 For children in 6-10 and 11-15 age groups, private school participation is
large. Parents prefer private schools for their school going children.
 Private school students come from well-settled and educated families.
 In Pakistan private schooling is spatially concentrated. Over 50 percent
private school students are residing in 10 districts which tend to be more
urban and mostly are in Northern Punjab.
 This spatial distribution of private schools is in relation with the spatial
distribution in private school supply.
QUALITY OF TEACHING AND LEARNING:
General concept is that quality of education in private schools is better than
that in public schools. However, in Punjab LEAPS project was conducted by
World Bank. It was b based on test scores of third grade students from
various private and publi8c institutions. This data revealed that performance
of students of private schools was far impressive than that of public school
students.
DIVERSITY OF PRIVATE EDUCATION:
Differentiation cannot be made just on the basis of Urdu medium and English
medium schools. However, they can now be classified on a much broader
range. For example there are faith based schools which promote specific
religion or secular education. Among religious institutions there are some
which are conservative while others are in accord with the modern age.