Urban Education Systems in Pakistan: Is Social Justice Possible?

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Reproduction of Social Inequalities: Violence, Exclusion and Marginalization

Proposal

The city is a complex ecosystem and a backdrop against which many different peoples live their lives. Of the many threads that weave together this urban social fabric one is the education system(s). Using schools as a unit of analysis, in this paper I explore the challenges of navigating the urban education terrain in Pakistan. I rely on writings that categorise schools in urban Pakistan along the lines of language of instruction, curriculum and ownership. Through focusing on these categorisations I engage with two key question: 1) How is this complexity in the education landscape a reflection of structural, historical, economic, linguistic and religious diversity? 2) How does such a differentiated education system contribute to inequality and social fragmentation?
In this paper I engage with conceptualisation and theorisation of structural inequality with a focus on global south. I analyse Pakistan’s differentiated urban education system through a lens informed by writings on neoliberalism and globalisation. I argue that government and non-government organisations have worked in tandem to sustain a system that creates social hierarchies, and linguistic differences determine neoliberal conceptualisations of success. The hierarchical distribution of social capital within this urban education landscape continues to benefit historically advantaged segments of society. I further argue that this is not a uniquely Pakistani issue and that such a hierarchical organisation of education is premised on elite school practices and has postcolonial overtones, cosmopolitan understanding of urbanity and its performance further perpetuate and sustain differentiated opportunity trajectories which are arguably unequal in their promise of social mobility. I discuss the issues in Pakistan’s urban education systems by drawing on writings on structural inequality and the crisis of unequal and unplanned rapid urbanisation. I argue that a deeper understanding of the prevalent systems, axes of differences along which systems are classified, and the impact of differentiated systems on social justice is important to create an equitable system.
I offer a nuanced understanding of Pakistan’s urban education landscape, attempt to anchor this within a historical context and offers insight into the challenges of urbanisation. I further view this microcosm of urban education system in the context of recent developments in education policy in Pakistan. I contextualise this research within literature on social justice, postcolonial realities, and structural inequality. In this paper I offer a unique perspective on Pakistan's urban eductaion system; I depart from popular 'development' discourse and analyse the postcolonial underpinnings of neoliberal individual success alongside deconstructing prevalent systems of education. I build on previous work on classification of the urban education system, however, I problematise this classification by linking this disparate system to wider debates on social justice. Rather than a static view of categories of schools along the elite school and non-elite school binary, which is predominant in literature on the subject, I offer insight into the spectrum of differences and the mushrooming of schools in rapidly urbanising Pakistan. I link this 'spectrum' of differences to my question on diversity within systems of urban education and the implications of these for social justice; an area less researched in this geographical context.

Author

• irum maqbool, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge