1. Learning Relevance & Learning Outcomes: At what cost? Paper presented at a conference on Quality – Inequality Quandary Transacting Learning Relevance & Teacher Education in South Asia Lahore April 4-5, 2012 By Aziz Kabani

2. Why Education? What is the purpose/aim of education? – Individual’s perspective – Society's perspective

3. Why Education? Individual’s perspective – May vary from person to person Passion, financial stability, social status, character building etc.

4. Why Education? Society’s perspective – Broader, progressive and enlightened vision of society realized through education (for example) Socrates Plato Aristotle Whitehead Russell Dewey NEP

5. Why Education? Broader – not confined to a single discourse Progressive – knowledge should be continuously expanded and refined through systematic enquiry (reason) applied on human experiences Enlightened – based on justice and equality achieved through adherence to certain ethical principles

6. Why Education? Today’s society – Entirely ordered by a single mode of exchange’ (Slater and Tonkiss 2001 p. 199) – a market society if you like. – Education has become a ‘commodity’ both in the individual’s perspective as well as in the society’s perspective Quality of life Skilled labor force

7. Why Education? Industrialization coupled with capitalism has resulted in the commodification of education After the disintegration of communist bloc, the world became unipolar and capitalism/neo-liberalism became a universal phenomenon

8. Scenario Dilemma Neo-liberal influence in education has become a global reality The local educational context is dominated by ‘marketphobic’ discourses

9. Scenario Dilemma Education has been confined to quantifiable/measureable learning outcomes with sole pursuit of preparing people for the market driven economy This means that we do not prepare our children for a ‘better society’ but we rather prepare them for a ‘competitive/ruthless market’ where test results become ultimate outcome of the entire educational experience What is valued is a set of skills and competencies

10. Scenario Dilemma Learning outcome becomes the ultimate indicator of quality Why this approach is problematic? Pauline Lipman (2009) – Paradoxes of Teaching in Neo-liberal Times: Education ‘reform’ in Chicago

11. Scenario Dilemma Contract and Charter schools Centralized accountability, regulation of teaching and narrowing the curriculum ‘Ethical retooling’ Paradoxes and moral dilemmas

12. SEF Projects Two mega projects under public-private partnership portfolio: – Integrated Education Learning Program (IELP) – Promoting Private Schooling in Rural Sindh (PPRS) Project Bowe, Ball and Gold (1992) – Context of influence – Context of policy text production – Context of practice

13. SEF Projects Neo-liberal influence The World Bank Education seen with the lens of economics – Involvement of private entrepreneur instead of community based organizations – Per child-subsidy method of financing education with the provision of ‘profit’ – Continuity of funding on the basis of students’ test results or learning outcomes

14. Responses Communicating a broader vision of education to all the stakeholders particularly entrepreneurs and teachers The social, humanistic, ethical and democratic purpose of education should constitute the core values of teaching/learning ‘Scientific’ knowledge should be promoted while conventional wisdom should be preserved and benefitted from

15. Responses Children’s holistic development becomes core of the intervention Child-friendly pedagogy should replace examination based teaching Students assessment should be replaced by school assessment

16. Responses Teachers professional autonomy should be valued Teachers’ should be provided enough space/freedom to teach Teachers should assume more and more control of the curriculum

17. Thank you