Fatima Tariq
Punjab’s Education Minister has criticised teachers’ performance, and the criticism may carry some merit in isolation. But criticism without diagnosis is not reform. If Pakistan’s educational crisis — and Punjab’s in particular — is subjected to honest, rigorous analysis, a different picture emerges. The root of the failure is not the teacher standing in front of a classroom of fifty children. It is the administrative and bureaucratic structure that sits above that classroom and has failed, consistently and comprehensively, for decades.
Until the system is fixed, holding teachers accountable will produce noise, not change.
Education quality is not manufactured in the classroom alone. It is shaped long before a teacher writes the first word on a blackboard. It is formed in the secretariat, in policy documents, in legislation, in curriculum design, in training institutions, in monitoring frameworks, and in institutional leadership. If the secretary, the director, and the departmental hierarchy cannot provide coherent policy, sustained reform, and a clear educational vision, the consequences of that failure land on the teacher. And then, apparently, the teacher is blamed for them.
This is neither fair nor productive.
One of the most glaring structural failures of Punjab’s Education Department is the absence of a professional Educational Administration Cadre. The rest of the world has long understood that running educational institutions is a specialised function. Effective educational administrators are trained for the role, developed over careers, and held to standards specific to institutional leadership. In Punjab, a teacher is routinely elevated to head teacher or school principal without any administrative training whatsoever. School leadership is not an extension of classroom teaching. It is a distinct discipline requiring separate skills, a separate career structure, and deliberate preparation. The fact that this cadre does not exist is not a minor gap. It is a foundational failure.
The question must also be asked directly: what has the Education Department actually achieved in recent years in the areas that matter most? What progress has been made in curriculum reform? What pedagogical innovations have been introduced and sustained? What improvements are visible in delegated legislation, educational policy architecture, or quality indicators? If honest answers to these questions reveal stagnation, then the accountability conversation must begin at the top, not at the bottom.
The record of projects undertaken with international donor agencies also deserves impartial review. Pakistan’s education sector has absorbed considerable foreign funding over the years. The question is whether that funding has produced measurable, lasting improvements in educational quality or whether it has largely translated into administrative activity — workshops, reports, and consultancies that leave little behind. Compounding this problem is the issue of officer transfers. A generalist bureaucrat trained abroad at public expense is frequently moved to an entirely different department within months. The investment evaporates. The institutional knowledge disappears. Sustainability is never achieved because continuity is never permitted. This is a policy failure of the first order. Alongside this, potential conflicts of interest between donor institutions and government officers require transparent examination. Institutional trust cannot be built on unexamined relationships.
Teacher training is its own crisis within the crisis. Training institutions have not kept pace with evolving pedagogical demands. Programs are misaligned with what modern education research recommends. New institutions, where they exist at all, are often still caught in the procedural stages of establishment and recruitment, unable to function effectively for years after their creation. In any rational system, institutions are strengthened first, and individuals are then expected to perform within them. Pakistan has consistently reversed this sequence, strengthening nothing and then blaming individuals for the consequences.
The path forward is not complicated in its logic, though it is demanding in its execution. The Education Department must undertake fundamental reform across every layer of its functioning: its bureaucratic structures, its legislative framework, its delegated legislation, its curriculum, its training systems, and its administrative cadre. A permanent, professional Educational Administration Cadre must be created. Head teachers must receive serious, structured administrative training before assuming leadership responsibilities. Serving teachers must have access to continuous capacity building, modern curriculum frameworks, and real pedagogical support. Monitoring must shift from punitive surveillance to developmental feedback.
When the system performs its own responsibilities honestly and completely, it earns the right to expect performance from those within it. When policy is coherent, training is functional, leadership is professional, and curriculum is sound, accountability for classroom outcomes becomes meaningful and fair.
Until then, criticising teachers while leaving the administrative superstructure intact is not education reform. It is, at best, political theatre. At worst, it deepens the very dysfunction it pretends to address.
Pakistan’s education crisis has administrative roots. It requires administrative surgery. Everything else is delay.
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