Examples from the past
Community owned and operated schools in northern Pakistan.
As General Manager for the Aga Khan Education Service (AKES) in Pakistan’s northern mountains, Jonathan was given responsibility for 180 remote rural girl’s schools that required a high level of outside subsidy, delivered low quality of education to communities that desperately wanted their schools upgraded to middle or high school level. He had the seemingly impossible task of reducing the level of subsidy, increasing quality and providing affordable access to higher levels of education. Together with his staff and community representatives, and sometimes in desperation, they discovered how to forge a partnership with individual communities that gave them responsibility for day to day school management and empowered them to reach out to their diaspora and relationship network to leverage donations, government resources and a stream of qualified teachers keen to serve their community that AKES could never have achieved. AKES took responsibility for selecting teachers from community-identified candidates, providing oversight of educational quality and affiliating schools with the national examination board.
Results:
Cost recovery for school operations rose from 13% to over 40%
There are powerful local solutions waiting to be discovered by local people, but someone may need to facilitate the discovery
Greater community involvement in school governance and oversight is now widely encouraged by the Government of Pakistan and is required in many districts
Results:
Cost recovery for school operations rose from 13% to over 40%
- 30 communities were able to upgrade their schools to middle or high school level
- Examination pass rates rose over an 8 year period from less than 40% to more than 80%
There are powerful local solutions waiting to be discovered by local people, but someone may need to facilitate the discovery
- The maturity, wisdom and local knowledge of un-schooled village elders often outclasses the confident expertise of those who consider themselves more educated and smart
- Effective solutions require risk, time and willingness to learn from mistakes
Greater community involvement in school governance and oversight is now widely encouraged by the Government of Pakistan and is required in many districts
- Some bilateral donors (Norway and the EU) have used this model of community partnership for expanding schools in other underserved areas
Examination Reform in Pakistan
The rote memorization emphasis of Pakistan’s high school matriculation examinations undermines efforts to improve subject understanding and problem solving among students. 3 years of effort to improve high school learning in northern Pakistan taught us that teachers who had their students do little more than memorize past exams for the last two years of high school got the best examination results, and efforts to improve understanding caused examination results to fall. The examination was the primary obstacle to quality improvement, but the national and provincial examination boards had no intention of changing.
In 1998, in his capacity as General Manager of the Aga Khan Education Service, Jonathan requested the Aga Khan University to examine the feasibility of establishing an independent examination board under the terms of their federal charter, pointing out that they could build on their experience with their admission exam. By 2002 Pakistan’s National Assembly had officially authorized the establishment of the Aga Khan University Examination Board (http://www.aku.edu/akueb/), and in 2003 in his capacity as Senior Education Advisor to USAID Pakistan, Jonathan was instrumental in securing $4.5 million in USAID funding for its launch.
Results
Pakistan now has a private independent examination board, the AKUEB, combined with support services to help schools and teachers make the transition to instruction intended to foster subject understanding and application.
Lessons
Sometimes the obstacle to change is systemic and no amount of local effort is going to produce the desired results
In 1998, in his capacity as General Manager of the Aga Khan Education Service, Jonathan requested the Aga Khan University to examine the feasibility of establishing an independent examination board under the terms of their federal charter, pointing out that they could build on their experience with their admission exam. By 2002 Pakistan’s National Assembly had officially authorized the establishment of the Aga Khan University Examination Board (http://www.aku.edu/akueb/), and in 2003 in his capacity as Senior Education Advisor to USAID Pakistan, Jonathan was instrumental in securing $4.5 million in USAID funding for its launch.
Results
Pakistan now has a private independent examination board, the AKUEB, combined with support services to help schools and teachers make the transition to instruction intended to foster subject understanding and application.
Lessons
Sometimes the obstacle to change is systemic and no amount of local effort is going to produce the desired results
- It takes an understanding of the political economy to identify successful strategies for change. This is true in mission organizations as well as local and national churches.
- Increasing numbers of schools throughout Pakistan have been able to break free from the strangle hold of the national examination system, enabling them to better prepare students for the demands of higher education
- The government examination boards themselves have begun changing the format of their examination for fear of being sidelined by the AKUEB.