Achieving Education for All

Ensuring that girls have access to primary education is “clearly linked” to hiring women teachers, according to Dr Fareeha Zafar, author of a Commonwealth Secretariat publication.

It is for this reason, she argues, that educational policies have stressed the importance of increasing the number of women teachers.

“Given the traditional and conservative socio-cultural environment [in Pakistan], the presence of a woman teacher makes all the difference to whether or not a girl will be allowed to attend school,” writes Dr Zafar.

This is one of a number of examples included in ‘Achieving Education for All: Pakistan’, which looks at successful educational practices in that country.

Overcoming challenges

Pakistan has an overall female illiteracy rate of nearly 60 per cent, with a 45.3 per cent rate among the 15-24 age group.* It also remains one of the few Commonwealth countries in which male teachers outnumber female teachers with a ratio of 3:2 at both primary and secondary school level.

Yet, despite these challenges, the publication - the third in a series on ‘Commonwealth Education Good Practices’ – looks at a number of promising education strategies within the country which aim to reverse these trends.

Dr Zafar identifies key criteria used to define promising practices in working towards universal primary education as: creativity, effectiveness, comprehensiveness, impact, relevance, sustainability and potential for expanding the practice without compromising its basic principles.

Committing resources

The provision of free textbooks to primary school children was another of these success stories in Pakistan noted by Dr Zafar.

“With the focus on poverty, recognition that parents who are otherwise motivated to send their children to school are hampered in buying books has prompted the Government to ensure that no child is kept out of school for this reason,” she explains.

Other good practices range from government initiatives such as recruiting and training more female teachers to help increase the proportion of girls in education, to partnerships between government and non-governmental organisations like the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development.

“The Government of Pakistan has committed considerable resources to its Education Sector reforms Action Plan, concentrating particularly on adult education, education for all and technical education,” writes Roli Degazon-Johnson, Education Adviser, Commonwealth Secretariat, in her Foreword to the publication.

“We trust that education policy-makers and practitioners in the Commonwealth and beyond will benefit from this report and the experience it documents.”

* UNESCO Institute for Statistics Education Database as at October 2006.