Being an educationist, I have critically reviewed the Government ‘s proposals for the new Single National Curriculum (SNC). I see a cognitive development gap in children taught by existing curricula and their mental readiness for a SNC that is supposed to end the educational apartheid.
The presentation of content information in the SNC lacks the significant element of differentiation for learners at different stages of development. Indeed, there is little to show an awareness of how children develop, which is an awareness of the psychology of learning. This will definitely create cognitive dissonance for children who engage with the new curriculum without first having the necessary scaffolding of prior content knowledge. This triggered me to seek some school teachers’ opinions about the appropriateness of the SNC for public and private schools.
Government teachers highlighted that it would be challenging to implement the SNC simultaneously for all grades, and suggested that it should be launched sequentially from early childhood onwards. They did not support the current proposal to make it compulsory for all grades simultaneously. Teachers working in rural areas, where Urdu is not their students’ mother tongue, were concerned about the technical challenges of using it as the medium of instruction in certain subjects, especially science.
On the other hand, private school teachers raised their concerns about implementing the SNC in the private schools because their students’ level of understanding is more advanced than the SNC assumes. Much more work needs to be done in Pakistan to understand the relationship between the SNC and the Cambridge syllabus, which has been constructed from an extensive knowledge of students’ capabilities.
Presently, the Government and advisory staff seem to ignore any involvement of the teaching staff in matters connected to policy. Nevertheless, the SNC should establish the desired objectives of the government, that asserts ‘one Nation: one Curriculum’. Later evaluation studies will also help to determine the credibility of the SNC. With the implementation of the SNC, hopefully a consensus will emerge to establish an appropriate partnership between matters of national policy where the government must lead, and matters of professional practice, which educationists must be allowed to influence. In the dynamic of the curriculum, professional input from educators should be expected to feed into the preparation of government policy
Madrassah is one of the significant education streams that is responsible for religious education. The teaching of tolerance, peace promotion, responsible citizenship, conflict management, and human rights are among the most important aims of the SNC. Students enrolled in all streams of education need to be engaged in these learning objectives but particularly in the madrassah, that has been controversial for ‘hate speech’, ‘sectarianism’, ‘prejudice’ and ‘intolerant beliefs’ for other religions. My earlier research suggests madrassah reform is possible and should proceed towards the unification of syllabuses in the way SNC proposes.
The recent initiative of E-Taleem was introduced by MOE to overcome the learning crisis during COVID-19, but there have not yet been any researched evaluations of the extent to which it impacted positively on students’ learning. So there has to be some doubt as to whether introducing the SNC in the manner proposed, while the pandemic is still ongoing, will work wonders in accelerating students’ cognitive development. Pakistan does not currently participate in the international Pisa and TIMMS testing: is there a policy intention that the SNC will lead to this? Either way, the SNC creates a heightened need for good quality professional development for teachers, and some issues about whether additional recruitment will be necessary.
An example of teacher quality concerns the religious education requirements of the SNC and whether the existing pool of teachers really has the knowledge, skills and dispositions to teach the subject in the educative manner now required. Can that be achieved by training, and will that happen?
Curriculum development is always a dynamic process, because teaching involves millions of human interactions in widely varying contexts. It is also cyclical and not linear. The outcomes from one stage feed back to power the next stage. This gives the curriculum, the schools, the teachers and the students a dynamic. For ever, moving on and forward. In this way, we and our country improve and progress. There is little evidence that the originators of the SNC understand the dynamic of the curriculum process, or how to implement it in Pakistan. New curricula are always pilot tested and then implemented. They are then evaluated when in use, and improvements proposed for the next stage of progress.
Dynamic, national curriculum frameworks come alive in classrooms, where success or failure relies upon the actions of the teachers charged with delivery. Hopefully the SNC will sharpen the aims and objectives of Pakistan education, but the teachers are an essential component.
Currently, in Punjab, QAED Academy is the main focal point and agency for teacher professional development generally. Short courses led by motivational speakers form the backbone of their offer. There has to be a lot of uncertainty about whether this format really changes the attitudes and behaviour of older teachers in the final phase of their career or generates worthwhile positive change for the others. It will be important for QAED to continue to develop and enrich its range of support for school-based professional learning. Particularly, QAED should use competent, well qualified curriculum developers, who recognise the worth and experience of existing teachers. Teachers need to ‘own’ the curriculum, to believe in it, and to teach it with enthusiasm to the students. Younger teachers would find an opening up of the curriculum, which would then need to be supplemented with a range of learning methods, derived from a knowledge of the psychology of learning and discovery.
Presently, the Government and advisory staff seem to ignore any involvement of the teaching staff in matters connected to policy. Nevertheless, the SNC should establish the desired objectives of the government, that asserts ‘one Nation: one Curriculum’. Later evaluation studies will also help to determine the credibility of the SNC. With the implementation of the SNC, hopefully a consensus will emerge to establish an appropriate partnership between matters of national policy where the government must lead, and matters of professional practice, which educationists must be allowed to influence. In the dynamic of the curriculum, professional input from educators should be expected to feed into the preparation of government policy.
