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Title: Public Examination: From Authentic Marking to Informing Students' Learning

  Author: Shagufta Shazadi Hira is a pseudonym given to the victim “You have to pa y Rs.1500/- against each paper for reviewing and only your marks will be recounted in the concerned papers”. More than a shocking statement for Hira because having 5 siblings belonging to the lower-income family; it was easy to say than managing Rs.4500, to get the review of three papers simultaneously. A brilliant student obtaining consistently higher scores in the previous school-based examinations. She was confident in her attempt in all three papers in the board-level examination too but not in the result she received, contrary to her expectations, unfortunately. Her parents were bearing Hira in their mind as a doctor therefore she had burnt midnight oils to get admission in a medical college and to let the dream of her parents come true. However, to her dismay, all of a sudden, a dreadful result put an axe over her dream as well as on her trust over the examination system. Hence, there was no w...
Recent posts

Why Our Education System could not stand the COVID-19 Shock

  Author: Shagufta Shazadi It is high time that the PTI government takes education as a serious matter as the country’s economy, and sets its directions right on the future of education. If PM Imran Khan thinks that we can learn from China does he mean only learning how to handle their economy and politics or he can also learn how to revive the education system? It seems that the occurring of natural disasters is on the rise so is humans’ responses to them but that is not true for everyone. Like other countries of the world, Covid-19 hit Pakistan with a surprise, no one was ready to make a timely and effective response to it. As a result, almost, all the systems collapsed, and shutting down the country was the solitary option. We are thankful that the pandemics did not test our health system intensively therefore somehow, we could manage it. After people’s livelihoods, formal education was the worst hit. Schools were closed nationwide for about six months and about nine months in...

Confused Teachers and Covid-19 Shock

Author: Shagufta Shazadi With the announcement of “school closure” amid covid-19 by the Federal Minister for Education “Shafqat Mehmood”, a celebration started across the country. The minister became the students’ favourite and social media was flooded with praises and memes adoring his move. The reaction from the students is quite natural because schools are not the places where children enjoy learning and teachers enjoy teaching. In general, our schools are hostile, tedious, and haunted. The students are in the schools to meet their parent’s expectations, fulfilling their dreams, or be forced to be in the school. The teachers are in the school because they are paid to be present in the school. There was no surprise when the schools across the country were asked to close again because everyone knew that a second wave of the COVID 19 is going to hit again. The minister announced that teachers should come to school and assign homework to the students, and start online classes.  ...

A Hope for Better Education

  Author: Shagufta Shazadi Prime Minister Imran Khan in his first address to the nation on the national television said that he would improve the quality of education in public schools. He was candid in admitting the bleak picture of the public schools across Punjab and other provinces, saying that the middle-class families have to spend a great deal of money to send their children to private schools as no one is prepared to get their children admitted in public schools. Yes, our prime minister is right, public schools offer anything but learning. Similarly, the World Economic Forum ranked Pakistan at 125th, out of 130 countries, in a list of availability of top-quality education. This indicates how pathetic our country’s education system and how badly it requires attention. Since the current public education system in Pakistan is unable to provide top-quality education to a large population, while unreasonably exorbitant “burger schools” are exceptionally expensive for the maj...

Teaching to Test: Should teachers follow the phrase?

Author: Shagufta Shazadi The matriculation graduate with the distinction could hardly write a piece on a given topic though he could mechanically write an application for sick leave or “I have an urgent piece of work at home, so I beg to say please grant a one-day leave”. My respectable teacher, the late Zubaida Bana shared this incident with me, once during a discussion with her about the filthy system of current public examination in Pakistan. A thought-provoking conversation compelled me to reflect if the blame of students’ incapability of writing a simple writing piece goes only to the teachers, like what and how they teach in the classroom? Or is there an external factor(s), which hinders teaching and learning processes? What is a common thing among all Pakistani teachers is that they teach their students to pass examinations. This single reason fails the entire education system.   The National Education Policy (2009) has mentioned curriculum, assessment system, textbooks, tea...