Webinar: Need of Career counseling in Pakistani Education system

"Find out what you like doing best, and get someone to pay you for doing it"

A webinar session in the context of Public sector reforms and social change supervised by Dr. Athar Rashid was organised by a group of students of Governance and Public Policy Department on the topic "NEED OF CAREER COUNSELING IN PAKISTANI EDUCATION SYSTEM" on 27th April 2022.The session was presided over by respected Mr. GULFAM AKRAM. He's a civil engineer form UET, Post graduate in Public administration, Working as Sub-divisional officer (BPS-17) at Govt.of Punjab, Communication &Work department and a well known entrepreneur and a philanthropist.

The webinar was organized with the objective to spread the awareness on importance of choosing the right career path in Pakistani education system. Stream selection is an important milestone in the career planning stage and different parameters are crucial to evaluate before choosing the respective stream. Career options available for each stream were discussed in discussion.

The speaker informed about the importance of career counseling and the challenges that are faced while deciding the career in Pakistan. Considerations such as parent’s preferences, economic resources, peer pressure and career trend were also discussed. Now a days in Pakistan the talented youth is facing frustration and numerous challenges with respect to unemployment and uncertainty. Situation is moving on that there is nothing to see as right person for right job. Employment is very much difficult in the country like Pakistan, where unemployment is strengthening its foundation and will continue to get even worse so it is very crucial to opt for the career which is to grow further and which has the flexibility to get it bigger.The key purpose of career counseling is to help out students for choosing a field that is in tune with their skills and their job expectations. Thus, with the help of career counseling, most candidates choose the right career, and perform their level best, which ultimately helps them to succeed. 

Speaker addressed that in Pakistan, career counseling is very important as this soil has a abundance of talent and starting it from grass root level, is an ultimate need. The need of career counseling in educational setting can be promoted through conducted various seminars, workshops catering both parents and students and counseling departments should be encouraged in every institute so that students should clearly define the paths they wanted to be in and a properly guided individual can flourish more than an individual with an unclear mind.

To conclude, We can say that the crux of career counseling in Pakistan is to provide the necessary guidance that would help the student in making the right choice regarding their career.In this situation, seeking the help of an experienced and qualified career counselor become necessary. He /she can assist you in discovering your potential and aptitude accordingly in order to suggest the right course.People have begun to realize the fact that not all can become engineers or doctors and started exploring other fields depending on their talent and interest in alternate domains.

This session was proved very beneficial for the attendees. It was a very enlightening experience for the students and the webinar ended on a successful note.

Organizers: 

Ayesha Abbasi (Host), Arbaz Khan, Bilal Akram , Barkha Khan

GPP Department

Numl Islamabad

 

Purpose of Education for any Nation || Education Sector of Pakistan

 This Blog is Covering the following topics

Why New Policies are  Made Time to Time in Pakistan

Role Of Education in Developing Countries

Definition Of Education Planning

Definition Of Education Policy 

Why it is Important for Pakistan to have an Effective Education Policy

Education System in Pakistan

Education System and MDGS Goals

 

If We discuss about the education policy of Pakistan from the day of independence 1947  Pakistan cant able to make a sustainable education policy  after some years the education policy changes so if there was not a sustainable education policy then how can we believe that there will be progress in education sector. Tell 1970 we don’t have any concrete education policy

·         1970 = First Education policy

·         1972 = Second  Education policy

·         1979 = Third Education policy

·         1992 = Fourth Education policy

·         1998 = Fifth Education policy

·         2010 = Sixth Education policy

·         2011 = Seventh Education policy

·         2021 = Eighth Education Policy

This is the long history of Pakistan Education policy and its still going so the biggest reason of these ups and downs is political instability and economic instability  but some other issues are as below,

1)      Lack of Proper Planning

2)      Social constraints 

3)      Gender gap

4)      Cost of education

5)      War on Terror

6)      Funds for Education

7)      Technical Education

The education and development go hand in hand. The Role of education in developing countries is a very important  and its importance increases in country like Pakistan. One as lack of education causes poverty and slow economic development of a country especially if the country is a developing country. Education is very important for everyone it’s a primary need of any individual, every girl or boy child should have the right to quality education so that they can have better chances in life, including employment opportunities, and better health.

The role of education in poverty reduction is huge. Some advantages of education are

·        It boosts economic growth

·        Increases the GDP of a country.  

·        Reduces infant mortality rate, 

·        Increases human life expectancy. 

Education is an important investment in a country as there are huge benefits. Education guarantees lifetime income; it promotes peace and reduces drop-out rates from schools and colleges and encourages healthy competition. Many children dropout form colleges as they are not aware of the advantages of college education. Education helps in making the right decisions at the time of conflicts.

Definition of Education Planning

Educational planning is Defined as  it is the application of rational, systematic analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals of its students and society.

Definition of Education Policy

Every country has their own education policy according to their country issues. If we try to define the education policy it  consists of the principles and government policies in the educational sphere as well as the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems. Education occurs in many forms for many purposes through many institutions. Some Examples include early childhood education, kindergarten through to 12th grade, two and four year colleges or universities, graduate and professional education, adult education and job training. Therefore, education policy can directly affect the education people engage in at all ages. Examples of areas subject to debate in education policy, specifically from the field of schools, include school size, class size, school choice, school privatization, tracking, teacher selection, education and certification, teacher pay, teaching methods, curricular content, graduation requirements, school infrastructure investment, and the values that schools are expected to uphold and model. Issues in education policy also address problems within higher education. 

Why it is important for Pakistan to have an effective education policy

There is a serious need of education policy because The education system of Pakistan is comprised of

·    260,903 institutions and is facilitating 41,018,384 students with the help of 1,535,461 teachers.

·        180,846 public institutions

·        80,057 private institutions.

And  31% educational institutes are run by private sector while 69% are public institutes. 

That’s why we need a concrete and permanent education policy which will define our students and youth future direction.

Education system in Pakistan

The education sector not have been any attention of any of the government of Pakistan after independence 1947 tell 1970 we don’t have any concrete education policy which can define our course of action in education sector which is very important for the progress of Pakistan unfortunately the political and military leaders were interested in political gain and power gain so due to which our education sector lake behind but now due to international campaigns about education Pakistan is try to made little improvement in education sector not much but little changes are been made from last decades.

Pakistan has expressed its commitment to promote education and literacy in the country by education policies at domestic level and getting involved into international commitments on education. In this regard national education policies are the visions which suggest strategies to increase literacy rate, capacity building, and enhance facilities in the schools and educational institutes. MDGs and EFA programmes are global commitments of Pakistan for the promotion of literacy. A review of the education system of Pakistan suggests that there has been little change in Pakistan’s schools since 2010, when the 18th Amendment enshrined education as a fundamental human right in the constitution.

·        Problems of access,

·        Quality,

·        Infrastructure,

·        Inequality of opportunity.

Education policy in Pakistan and SDGS / MDGS  

   MDGs and Pakistan

Due to the problems in education system of Pakistan, the country is lagging behind in achieving its MDGs of education. The MDGs have laid down two goals for education sector:

Goal 2 Universal Primary Education

The goal 2 of MDGs is to achieve Universal Primary Education (UPE), children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. The enrolment statistics show an increase in the enrolment of students of the age of 3-16 year while dropout rate decreased. But the need for increasing enrolment of students remains high to achieve MDGs target. Punjab is leading province wise in net primary enrolment rate with 62% enrolment. The enrolment rate in Sindh province is 52%, in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK) 54% and primary enrolment rate in Balochistan is 45%.

 

Goal 3 Promoting Gender Equality and Women Empowerment

 The goal 3 of MDGs is Promoting Gender Equality and Women Empowerment. It is aimed at eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 and in all levels of education . There is a stark disparity between male and female literacy rates. The national literacy rate of male was 71% while that of female was 48% . Provinces reported the same gender disparity. Punjab literacy rate in male was 71% and for females it was 54%. In Sindh literacy rate in male was 72% and female 47%, in KPK male 70% and females 35%, while in Balochistan male 62% and female 23%

 

Pakistan’s ranking on Human Development Index (HDI)

 Pakistan’s ranking on Human Development Index (HDI) fell two notches and stood at 154th position in accordance with the 2020 report out of total 189 countries.

 

 

Suggestions  or Recommendations

·        Balanced approach for formal and informal education be adopted.

·        Government must take action against ghost schools

·        Implement single national curriculum in all provinces

·         Increases numbers of Vocational and technical training institutes

·        There is a need for implementation of national education policy and vision 2030 education goals.

·        Public private partnership is also future need

 

 

Thanks for reading

Written by = Yasir Hassan || G&pp || Bs 6^th

 

COMPARISON OF INDIAN RAILWAY WITH PAKISTAN'S RAILWAY

COMPARISON OF PAKISTAN'S RAILWAY WITH INDIAN RAILWAY

It   has become quite fashionable in Pakistan to compare every sector of the country with its respective Indian counterpart and start lamenting that every state institution in Pakistan is woefully deficient in terms of service delivery, profitability, efficiency, customer satisfaction etc., while everything is far better in every institution of India. Presently, Pakistan Railways is one such institution under spotlight. Everyone is comparing its performance with that of the Indian Railways without understanding that any comparison between these two institutions is a meaningless exercise because of their different colonial legacies, different historical evolution, different market environments and the extremely different governance structures under which they respectively operate.

Before proceeding further, let me first dispel the myth about the huge profits being earned by the Indian Railways. No railway in the world is in profit; it is never meant to be. They are not built for purely commercial purposes; they have multiple objectives in which profitability no doubt plays a key role but not a very significant one. That is why, even after privatisation in major European countries, not only the infrastructural development of the railway networks lies with the state, huge subsidies are being paid to the private sector operating those trains which are unable to earn profits.

Indian Railways is no exception. After the amalgamation of separate budget of the Indian Railways with the Union Budget in 2016 (Pakistan did it in 1992), Indian Railways have not published its operating ratio- the amount it spends to earn each dollar/pound/rupee. However, it used to be around 95. In other words, it earns 100 rupees for every 95 rupees spent. Pretty profitable? Unfortunately, no. If you deduct the Indian Rupees 30,000 crores of Public Service Obligations payments made by the Indian government to the Indian Railways to operate those services which are commercially not profitable but had to be kept operational due to their strategic or social welfare objectives, this ratio will be above 100. After the merger of the Indian Railways Budget with the Union Budget, they are debating whether to call these payments-subsidy or PSO payments!

On the other hand, Pakistan railways do not enjoy facility of Public Service Obligations payments. Profitable or not, it must run a train which used to run in 1947.When restructuring the Pakistan Railways in 1990s, it was recommended that if the state was interested to continue running of strategically or politically important loss-making trains, then it should compensate the Pakistan Railways for the loss incurred on its operation. These PSO payments were made to the Pakistan Railways for two years but were discontinued due to lack of funds. Instead it pays subsidy to the Pakistan Railways

Now coming to the main question- Can we make a meaningful comparison between Pakistan Railways and its Indian counterpart? Simple answer is no; complex answer is it depends. Let me explain

British Imperialism, like any other imperialism before, was an exploitative one for which they developed an extensive infrastructure to achieve their strategic and commercial interests. As luck would have been, India which inherited more than 80% of their vast rail network got the best of the British Indian Railways, not only commercially viable rail services but also its vast manufacturing capability and huge pool of trained workforce. As only their branch lines were cut off because of the creation of Pakistan, Indian Railways could keep bulk of their train operational in the rest of the country

On the other hand, Pakistan, which was carved out of the provinces situated in the outer periphery of the vast British Indian Empire, got the bulk of the railway built by the British to achieve their strategic and geopolitical objectives in these outlying areas. They were meant for easy and rapid movement of troops and their families and transportation of war material to these areas, not for general passenger travel.

Being branch lines and built for strategic purposes, all the rail network with the sole exception of Lahore to Karachi route inherited by Pakistan was commercially non-profitable from the start. Severance of these branch-line connections from their main arteries in the wake of the partition of the Subcontinent, made them totally non-profitable. Pakistan Railways kept these lines operational mainly by utilising its profits from the few profit-making routs for operating loss -making trains. This cross subsidization helped it to provide facilities to the public for transportation of goods and commutation of passengers in the absence of roads in the far-flung areas of the country.

However, this cross -subsidization soon ran out of steam. While all the profit earned from commercially viable train operations was eaten up in running the loss-making trains, the profit-making rail services started losing their profitability in the face of tough competition from fast improving road network and transport discussed below.

After independence, India and Pakistan both embarked on planned development in which infrastructural development, with special emphasis on expanding the communication network, was the key priority Here both the countries opted for different policies. In the absence of a comprehensive transport policy which would have given the direction to the transport sector and had also encouraged private sector to come forward, in a mutually consistent and competitively neutral way, Pakistan preferred roads which got more funding than other three modes of transport i.e. rail, aviation and marine.

Being geographically smaller in size, Pakistan could extend its road network substantially. Over a period, a robust private transport sector emerged which could ply buses, trucks on these improved roads. Consequently, in the overall national transport perspective, instead of a national multi-modal transport network, there was an unnecessary competition between these two modes of transportation. As railways got a step motherly treatment in the allocation of funds for their operations, maintenance and improvement and construction of new networks, it was an unequal fight.

India, on the other hand, opted for improvement and expansion of rail network, a priority dictated by the political and strategic imperatives of keeping a continent-size country together than any profit motive. Indian Railways, therefore, got generous funding from the government as compared with the road which is still far from satisfactory in India. Indian Railways is lucky in another sense-four of their ministers later became the prime ministers of the country and always had a patronising attitude towards railway.  Even in the latest budget the present Indian leadership has tried to strengthen this institution and announced an initiative of us $137 billion investment in Indian railways.

Thus, comparing a strategic railway with a commercial one based on profitability is as inappropriate as comparing Pakistan road transport with Indian counterpart; both have evolved over a period under different sets of policies and priorities. That’s why running of trains in remote regions of India is still a viable option; doing the same in Pakistan is a recipe for disaster for the balance sheet of Pakistan Railways

Thirdly, it is the operational autonomy and financial independence of the Indian Railways which makes it possible to rationalise its operational policies and priorities in accordance with the changing economic conditions. Terminating loss making trains aside, Pakistan Railways cannot increase the railway fares even when the price of fuel skyrockets. Similarly, the degree of political interference in the operations of Pakistan Railways is far more than it is in case of Indian Railways. For example, while the Indian Railways can afford to disallow uneconomical train stoppages howsoever strong the political pressure may be, in Pakistan, having train stoppages, whether economically justified or not, is considered to be a prerogative of a political leader in his constituency.

Finally, it is the economies of scale which play a decisive role in determining the profitability or loss of a commercial venture. The bigger the size, the greater savings on fixed costs-simple and straight forward.  Indian Railways is one of the world’s largest railway networks comprising 115,000 km of track over a route of 65,808 km and 7,112 stations. Employing more than 1.3 million persons and operating in twenty-nine states and seven union territories, it carries around 9 billion passengers annually or more than 23 million passengers a day and more than 1000 million tons of freight per year. Running more than 12,600 passengers and around 7400 freight trains daily, Indian Railways earns approximately US$25 billion every year. In the presence of above mentioned facts and figures, any comparison between Indian Railways with that of Pakistan Railways is meaningless

So, what has happened to Pakistan Railways? Simple answer? Underfunding. It is the same old business principle-you earn if you invest and you earn more if you invest more. Noam Chomsky has rightly remarked “If you want to privatise something for pittance, first reduce its state funding, it will go in loss, and then sell it for a pittance”. That’s precisely what has happened to Pakistan Railways.

Since 1990s, every government, civilian or military, has been trying to privatise the Pakistan Railways and considered investing in an entity meant for privatisation as a sheer wastage of resources. This underinvestment has taken a heavy toll of the commercial viability of Pakistan Railways. No doubt they are running into losses, a perfect justification for their privatisation!

The honourable Chief Justice of Pakistan credited Lalu Parsad, former Minister for Indian Railways presently serving jail term for corruption, with “marvellous turnaround of Indian Railways despite not being a highly educated person”. (He is an LLB). Well, the truth is that it was Lalu Parsad’s sheer good luck that he became the minister for Indian Railways at a time when the two decades of consistent and massive investment made by his four illustrious predecessors in the Indian Railways had started bearing fruit. Even then, he fudged the figures by showing employee’s provident fund as an asset instead of liability. Just read the latest report of Indian Auditor General to know how he did the window dressing to show Indian Railways’ Profit & Loss Statement in black.

THE EDHI FOUNDATION - SWOT ANALYSIS

SWOT ANALYSIS is used to assess the internal and external factors, as well as the current and future potential of any organization. It helps the organization in keeping an accurate analysis which can be used as a guide. 

In this blog, I’ll be doing SWOT Analysis of the famous philanthropic organization ‘EDHI FOUNDATION’. 

STRENGTHS: 

• Self-less philanthropist  

Edhi Foundation was started by Abdul Sattar Edhi whose sole purpose was to help the people of his country. His efforts were self-less and he only wanted the best for his country and its people. 

• Determination  

There is no doubt in saying that this organization was made successful only because of his strong will and determination. 

• Humanity at first  

Serving humanity is the main objective of this organization. The first priority has always been to help the needy. 

• No religion and political partnerships  

The services of this organization are for everyone regardless of what religion they profess or what political party do they support. 

• Nonpartisan approach  

The approach of this organization is non-biased. It does not favor or dis-favor anyone based on any political affiliation.  

• Centralized management 

The management style of this organization is very centralized. Abdul Sattar Edhi was the founder, Bilquees Edhi was the Director Head Office and now Faisal Edhi and Kubra Edhi are the Chairman Head Office and Director Head Office respectively. 

WEAKNESSES: 

• No Proper Strategic Planning  

Unfortunately, there has been no strategic planning to manage and run the affairs of this organization. 

• No financial report  

It doesn’t give a financial report at the end of a year or month which would tell the exact facts and figures about how well the organization is doing. 

• Conventional Services 

The services provided by the organization are old and conventional now. There is no innovation in them. 

• Lack of digitalization/ Old technology 

The working of the organization and the services it provides are not digitalized. Same old methods are used, and technology is not used.  

OPPORTUNITIES:  

• Digitalization  

It can digitalize its system and make things easier for everyone. 

• Neo public management  

It is an anti-hierarchal management style based on the idea that the leader should take the role of general public which would help to solve the issues public in a better way. 

• Human resources  

It can improve its human resources which includes the manpower, labor, personnel associated with the organization. 

• Collaboration with international organizations 

It should collaborate with international organizations and bring in their ideas and the services they provide, to improve the working of the organization. 

THREATS: 

• Abdul Sattar Edhi and Bilquees Edhi’s death  

The two most trusted persons of this organization have unfortunately passed away which can result in decreased credibility of the organization.  

• Turning from personality driven to institutional management  

Institutional management is the management of different activities simultaneously. Previously, the organization was driven by only Abdul Sattar Edhi, but now different bodies have taken over the management which can result in inefficiency. 

• Misuse of resources 

People trust this organization blindly. Their donations can be misused if the system of accountability is not strong. 

• Trust issues 

People can have trust issues regarding the organization because of the death of Founder and his wife and because most of the working of this organization is not transparent.  

 

CONCLUSION 

Despite of these weaknesses and threats, the organization has been working successfully for so many years and we hope that it keeps on running at the same pace (InshaAllah).