A support network for primary school teachers in the Punjab: Challenges of policy and practice

Abstract

Punjab, with nearly half the country's population (around 85 million), is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. In 2003, the Punjab government initiated an Education Sector Reform Programme and is aggressively pushing both quantity and quality agendas in education. The focus on quality, inter alia, led to the restructuring of the Directorate of Staff Development (DSD) in 2004. DSD developed and received approval for a new policy framework which sought to provide continuing professional development (CPD) for public school teachers in the education sector of Punjab. The conceptual policy framework promotes a model of regular training, follow-up, and support demanded by teachers themselves. The establishment of a support network for primary school teachers was taken as the top priority since they make up approximately half the number of all public school teachers (approximately 300,000 in total) and, also because primary levels have a large student dropout rate, especially for girls. This paper charts the policy-making process and derives lessons from the planning and implementation challenges faced by DSD. It describes how the broad policy-making agenda has been developed piecemeal, relying mostly on whichever group of bureaucrats is able to carry the day in the higher echelons of power. To some extent, these political machinations and tacit agreements between power brokers have produced some positive outcomes over the short term but more recent political changes have led to such approaches being problematical. In addition, many challenges of political stability, public policy development, and issues of jurisdiction need to be resolved if there are to be longer-term impacts. © 2009 Springer Netherlands.