Teachers' Voices in Pakistan

• In Event: How do Private School Teachers raise their voices against injustice? Case Studies from India and Pakistan

Proposal

Teachers in Pakistan, both in the private and public sectors, face numerous challenges which have rendered teaching an unappealing profession for capable and ambitious professionals (Taniguchi & Rizwan, 2022; Rasheed, 2021). Some major issues that impact teachers’ ability to perform are meager salaries, inadequate resources, overcrowded classrooms, lack of support from management, and limited professional development opportunities (Navaiwala, 2014). Additionally, female teachers face gender discrimination and workplace harassment. Societal and cultural barriers impede their ability to work and progress professionally.

Problem Statement
Despite these harsh conditions, there is no law safeguarding teachers’ rights in Pakistan. This has further decelerated any possible efforts of improvement for them (Iqbal, 2021). Over the years teachers have emerged in pockets of self-reliant groups, to advocate for their rights and status in society, but mostly in vain (Sarfraz, 2019). Also, these attempts have been from public school teachers with no substantial evidence of any collective efforts by private school teachers even though 51% of teachers in Pakistan are employed in private schools (Ahmad et al., 2014).

Literature Review
The sparse information available through an analysis of policy documents, literature and digital media shows that Punjab Teachers’ Union (PTU) for public teachers is the only registered teachers’ union in Punjab. PTU seems to be quite influential in voicing out the narrative of public teachers (Punjab Teachers’ Union, n.d; Sarfraz, 2019). Against this context, we observe that, even with one of the lowest education budget allocations, teachers in the public sector are better paid than the private sector. In Punjab, despite some challenges, public teachers have more benefits, job security, regular salary increments and promotions as compared to private teachers.

On the contrary, even though private schools charge fees from students, unlike public schools, only a small proportion of these go into teachers' salaries (A teacher affects eternity, 2015). Due to an increasingly capitalist approach to education, parents have the autonomy to question teachers and accountability criteria have become suffocatingly stringent. Threats of termination for the slightest non-compliance, unpaid overtime, and administrative tasks are some of the exploitations they suffer from. In Punjab 80% of private school teachers are female as compared to 36% in public schools, and so gender discrimination is rampant. During Covid, many schools deducted teachers’ salaries even though students’ fees were not reduced (Zafar, 2020).

Despite these conditions, data on the subject is largely limited to opinion pieces and digital media articles. There is no information about the existence of any teachers’ representative bodies in Punjab. There are some social media groups where teachers share their grievances, but no action is taken to protest against incidents of exploitation.

Data Collection and Analysis
This study explores through interviews, various ways in which private and public school teachers in the province of Punjab, Pakistan, perceive avenues of advocacy and voice their concerns to those in authority. It identifies prevalent advocacy platforms and conduits of teacher support and paves the way for newer avenues of discussion. Manual coding is used to identify themes which are then analyzed.

Author

• Amber Noor Mustafa, Florida State University