Pakistan and Education Reform Policies: Intersections of Neoliberal and Global Forces

• In Event: 16.029 - Policyscapes of Education Reform: Vertical Case Studies of Educational Policy Appropriation Across National Settings

Abstract

Pakistan, with the sixth largest population in the world, contains 77 million children under age 18, giving the country one of the youngest populations worldwide (Burki, 2005). As of 2007, primary school enrollment was 62 percent, leaving over 35 percent of children aged five to nine (approximately 7 million) out of school (UNESCO, 2007). Access to education and the country’s literacy rate are deeply stratified by class, gender, generation and residence. Pakistan’s education indicators show that in the aggregate it ranks 142 on UNDP’s Human Development Index (Burki, 2005). While Pakistan has struggled to increase school enrollment throughout its history (Bray, 1983; Butler, 1988), international focus on the country’s strategic, economic, cultural and socio-political place in the world has perhaps never been as acute as it is today, making attention to education reform of critical concern globally.

Pakistan’s education reform efforts are frequently framed in the context of international security. The global community has become increasingly concerned about the susceptibility to political extremism of the large number of poorly educated young children in Pakistan, who are seen as posing a threat to both national and international security. When the 9/11 Commission, for instance, noted a critical link between international terrorism and Pakistan’s religious schools, the U.S. government underscored the improvement of Pakistan’s education system as one of the most critical tactics to prevent terrorism and improve global security. For decades, a growing number of the U.S. and international donor agencies have funded and implemented various educational programs as a long term effort in reforming Pakistan’s education system to prevent young adults from being targeted for political extremism (Hathaway, 2005).

Between the years 1947 and 2001, Pakistan has passed a total of eight national educational reform policies and tasked numerous committees and commissions with improving the education sector (Khalid & Khan, 2006), with very little substantive result, prompting one scholar to note: “Policy production in Pakistan can best be described as a continuous exercise of target revision” (Ali, 2006). Many of these education reform initiatives have been funded/led by international and national agencies, with the express purpose of developing education reform policies with emphasis on standardized testing, progressive pedagogy, economic development, and political democratization drawn from global ideologies (Carney, 2009). In the process, these policies are presented as value-neutral and apolitical. This paper will examine 2009 education reform in Pakistan which included the implementation of a national B.Ed program. It will investigate the discourses of a functionalist epistemology which placed the burden of success and failure on individual stakeholders such as teachers, students, and schools, driven by what Dale (2000) refers to as “hyperliberalism” in the global educational system. Based on policy document analysis and secondary research findings by local educators in Pakistan as part of this 2009 reform effort, the paper will highlight how local educators adapted and resisted this reform and describe the forces of globalization in Pakistan education reform policies.

Authors

• Cathryn S. Magno, Southern Connecticut State University

• Jamie Lew, Rutgers University