Every new government—and there are so many of them—takes it upon itself to announce a new policy for education, agriculture, investment, exports, governance, environment etc.  In all cases, some politician who has little or no knowledge of the subject takes the lead ably assisted by our  "A men for all seasons"-- our bureaucrats.  On occasion they will call a task force or some committee to deliberate the policy to give it a sense of consultation with the people.  The people on the task force remain much the same across subjects. The usual industrialists, the usual retired bureaucrats and judges. A common denominator across such efforts is the singular absence of expert opinion or informed research.
Policy is Pakistan is the mere announcement of a wish list that has been compiled on the fly by the combination of eager politician, bureaucrat and their social companions in between meetings, public appearances, shadi, bia and janaza. The uneducated public can be fooled into thinking that wishes are all achievable after all it is in keeping with their fatalistic approach to life. The latest education policy is no exception: it has been prepared by the education department and is being reviewed by a cabinet committee many of whose members are also on the governance as well as the tax reform task force along with many other responsibilities, including meetings, public appearances, shadi, bia and janaza. The educationist, academic and researcher is not invited to this August gathering.  But more on that later!
How is good policy made?
A good education policy would try to understand the existing structures as well as the behavior of all participants to first see how the system is working. It would then see what the objectives are and whether the current system is capable of achieving them. Should the government intervene? How should it do so and does it have valid instruments to intervene?
For example, in education before prescription, there are several questions that need to be answered to understand the current situation and place the role of government in some perspective.  Some of these are:
 Understanding the demand for education. Presumably there is a demand for education because it is an investment that pays of in terms of higher earnings than the alternative of no education.  But does this mean that the return occurs to all forms of schooling regardless of quality, content and some form of certification?  Do moral and religious education increase earnings in the marketplace? If not, is the continued emphasis on these aspects in the curricula serve to increase the demand for education? Similarly, does the declining quality of education in public schools help to increase the demand for education?
Do all parents demand education for their children?  Can the poor parents afford to forgo the income or labor of their children? Is it realistic to expect quick universal literacy  then?
Can we force all children to go to school? How is this policy to be administered even if it is consistent with human rights?
The system of supply of education. Education is being supplied by a complex bureaucracy in which the teacher is at the bottom of the totem pole, frustrated in every way. He has a lower grade than the administrator, a lower salary, relatively limited perks, and little control over syllabi and grading. He has no control over even his location, being subject to whimsical transfer. Why should he invest in his current situation? Is this model efficient? Is it followed in the rest of the world?
Examine the achievements of the current system.  The quantitative indicators, such as the resiliently low literacy and enrollment rates are well known. What is not emphasized as much as it should be the abysmally low and declining standards in the public schools that have robbed the poor of any opportunity for social mobility. We also forget how the universities for the last 30 years have not conducted examinations on time, regularly wasting from one to two years of a student’s time through sheer inefficient neglect.  We also do not notice how under-utilized our educational establishment given that an average school (especially college day) is much shorter in Pakistan than the rest of the world. There are hardly any seminars or extra-curricular lectures.  Recognizing the dismal quality of this education system, the rich have already flown the local education system.  The poor have no chance of competing with the foreign educated sons of the rich.  Is this not explosive?
What is the measure of performance in the current system? How is it enforced? When exams are not held on time and student years are wasted, do any heads roll? When students gain an education that they cannot use for gaining employment, what is the cost to those who provide and write the syllabi?
Admittedly, the current system with its low quality education, wastage, and ghost schools is not working. Should we expect it to deliver on more ambitious objectives without some fundamental reform?  Is this system capable of using resources more efficiently? Should we throw more resources at this system? Is it possible to run the system with the current managers, teachers and bureaucracy?  Or does it require a complete overhaul?
Once we understand the answers to the questions raised above, we can be in a better position to frame a policy. Having answered these questions we may be in a better position to understand the current system of education and the behavior of the agents involved. However, another important question that needs to be answered is "how and where can the government intervene?" The government, (which in Pakistan it has not been for the last 50 years), may be benign and wish to provide all Pakistanis with all the riches in the world but that is a far cry from actually providing them. As we have seen, despite all the planning and international borrowing on our behalf, we have not made much progress. Many would argue we have gone backwards.
In fact, bad policy is costly. The presumption that the government can fix everything by fiat is clearly wrong. Given our bitter experience with government intervention, we should have learnt this by now. Our analysis should tell us clearly where and how the government can interfere. What are the instruments that are available to the government to intervene? How effective are those instruments likely to be?
The current policy and problem
The difficulty with the current policy is the same as earlier policies (and many writers—Eqbal Ahmed, S. M. Naseem and Tariq Rehman to name a few—have very eloquently noted this) is that it makes the usual mistake of assuming that demand for the bureaucratic education being offered exists and is strong. The only reason that educational targets are not being met is the lack of schools. Merely supplying more schools, prescribing non-market related curricula and making education compulsory is all that is required.  This is despite the existence of ghost schools, under-utilization of existing capacity and the provision of poor quality education. It is the typical bureaucratic response  "if you build it, they will come," and it does not matter how you build.
Let us analyze the problem using some of the well-known answers to the above questions. The starting point of our analysis would be that people, now matter how poor and uneducated can see where their advantage lies. After these same poor uneducated people do find out international opportunities and migrate to take advantage of them. Certainly they can see the value of education and incur a cost—in terms of time and money—to obtain it. However, if they see poor quality education teaching them subjects that will not command a market price, they will not take the time to gain an education. Poor quality schools with some religious and chauvinistic curriculum will not allow them to earn more in the future and hence they are correct in avoiding such a system.
It is not a wonder that there is limited demand for current schooling and the education bureaucrat wishes for compulsory education. In our country where we cannot enforce elementary laws and discipline, it is a pipe dream to think that compulsory education can be enforced!
Measuring quality or the kind of education that the people demand requires effort and hence, is not done. It is easier to keep the issue at the level of increasing the number of schools and commanding what has to be read regardless of market considerations. Moreover, constantly increasing the number of schools is good for obtaining rents and corruption gains. Similarly suggesting non-modern and non-market subjects leads to employment of those that would otherwise be unemployable. But then they are only nurturing non-market related skills that are not going to yield a social or private rate of return. But in view of their private gains society and children must lose.
This vicious cycle of rentseeking and corruption has destroyed our education system and many an analyst, academician, educationist today is lamenting the situation. The notion that the form that government intervention can take is to build more schools and enforce syllabi and has not worked in the past and is unlikely to work in the future. Policy must therefore not be based on it. New initiatives must break away from this approach and look for new interventions and instruments.  The only way out of it is to reform the system in keeping with the way that most other countries are running their education system. In this globalized world, we cannot be an only exception that provides our kids useless and low quality education. It will surely destroy our economy and society. And it has!

What can we learn from others?
    Rather than re-invent the wheel, let us learn from the education-management approach that is used in other parts of the world. In particular, we should learn from the countries of the west, which have made the most advances in education in human history.  Perhaps changing our system to operate it along those lines will make it more efficient.

1. The teacher is the most important component of the education system. Any education system is only as good as the educators.
    a. Leave education decisions to the educators. In most countries all teaching decisions are left to the teachers. The teachers are closest to their subjects and developments therein. They must make curriculum, teaching methods, and grading decisions which are at the heart of the education system. Translated into Pakistan this would mean:
        i. withdrawal of the system of centralized syllabi decisions to allow the teacher more autonomy to determine what needs to be taught;
        ii. in all teaching decisions, including the hiring, promotions and salary increases of teachers, as well as school equipment requirements, it must be the educators who are in charge;

b. Treat the educators well. Teachers and educators are also at the apex of any educational system and not relegated to the bottom. They are well paid and considered to be in prestigious job. Our current system treats teachers badly and has hence not attracted the best people to this profession. They are not interested in education and hence dream up all kind of tricks that will not introduce quality education. We must pay the teachers well and give them adequate prestige to make it an attractive profession so that our best once again start taking up the academic profession.

2. The system must be performance-oriented. The entire education establishment exists to support the teacher in his job to create the product of quality education. The education ministry and private sector rating agencies attempt to measure performance rather than directly controlling the system.
    a. Measuring performance:  Performance of the educational institutions is judged by:
        i. the quality of teaching, ie, the worth of the certification provided judged by the kind of jobs and advanced education placements won by graduating students;
        ii. the number of students attracted;
        iii. the facilities provided for education such as libraries, teaching materials and facilities;
        iv. the intensity of the use of such facilities; and
        v. most importantly, how good is the faculty, which can be judged by their research and writing which is the principal function of all educationists, especially at the upper levels.

b. Incentives to better performance:
    i. Funding tied to performance:  To induce better performance, funding is tied into some form of objective performance criteria. This means that annual funding of the institution will be determined according to actual performance of the institution on these criteria. To make the system objective and transparent, sometimes a known formula is announced.
ii. Encourage diversity and competition. Not only is increased professionalism and autonomy good for the education system, it is also productive to allow competition and diversity. It is such a freewheeling approach that provides incentives for diversity and competition that has allowed the American education system to be the most innovative system that mankind has known. To straitjacket the system stifles the two cornerstones of an education system—creativity and innovation. Flexibility, diversity, competition will allow educators and students to experiment and learn. All our schools and colleges must not be uniformly good or bad. The insistence upon this principle will only force us to converge to the uniformly bad level. We must allow a certain distribution to develop, letting those at the upper end of the quality spectrum to take their own lead and do what they can while pushing those at the lower end to improve.

    Competition amongst educational institutions is the best way to provide quality and an innovative education. And competition can only take place if we have flexibility and diversity.  For example, is there any reason that all certification and syllabi should be arranged by the government. Why are all the secondary school boards government owned and sponsored?   Why can the private sector not run a school certification system?  Already, the American school system is doing it very effectively in each of our major cities. Perhaps the government should privatize the boards and allow more private sector boards to develop.  They will survive in the market-place according to their ability to provide quality.

    c. Value of education is determined by the market. Fancy titles and charters do not mean much in education. We have some of  the largest and well build universities in the world but also perhaps some of the most worthless degrees. Why should our educators wait for a charter from the government? In US there are no charters from the government. Should you wish to establish a degree-granting establishment, you can! Yet school and university rankings at all levels are commercially available and provide an in-depth analysis which parents and students can use to determine where they wish to go. Over time, reputations develop and that determines the demand for a school or college. People are willing to pay for quality as we all know.

3. Governance of educational institutions depends on academic and professional associations. Like any other enterprise educational institutions must be run by people who can supply the commodity called education along with those who demand education.  Centralized decision-making through bureaucrats sitting in remote locations has been found to be counterproductive. What we see is that:

a. Educational institutions are autonomously run. All educational institutions are independent in a performance-based system to allow them to compete in an innovative manner in providing a better education. To a large extent, even the educational institutions themselves are compartmentalized into autonomous units that compete for students, resources and prestige. Thus for example, since, business, social science and humanities are often separated and conduct business according to methods that each considers to be optimal for their work.  In colleges and universities, hiring is done by departments directly.

b. Governing bodies especially at the higher levels comprise interested individuals and internationally established academics. Imagine the US government trying to appoint the president of Harvard. Or imagine the Trustees of Harvard comprising of secretaries to the government, a nominee of the court and still more nominees of the government, including the favorite industrialist and members of the social clubs. Yes, we shudder at such thoughts. But recall, this is the way we run our universities.  Let us dispense with the fiction of the chancellor being the governor.  Universities should be run by boards comprising of our best academics even if they are living overseas. In fact, that may be an advantage. The governing board, through an international search should appoint a president for a term.  The president’s job should be to obtain funding and allocate it across the university and let the faculties determine all teaching and research decisions. The model for governing schools is similar.

4. Education system emphasizes problem solving, analysis, and research at all levels. The education system of the twenty-first century is not going to be based merely on rote learning. The Fordian assembly-line production operates with robots; all mechanical and menial tasks are increasingly being taken on by machines and robots. Even in the most elementary of jobs now problem solving and analysis are likely to be important. Research or the ability to keep abreast with the developments in one’s area of expertise is now quite necessary in view of the rapidity with which all skills are developing. All educators must, at all levels, must therefore be involved in writing and investigating.

5. Fees must be meaningful at least at the higher levels. Education is a vehicle for social mobility. Equality of opportunity for education must, therefore, be ensured. But this is not an argument for a general subsidy to education. Most of the welfare states are also moving away from a general subsidy for education especially at the upper levels. In the US a large proportion of college cost is recovered through tuition fees. At the upper levels, a quality education improves the earning potential so significantly that it is a bankable activity. Loans can be provided for education that are returnable as the graduate earns in his or her professional life. In Pakistan, there is a psychological resistance to increasing college fees even though private educational institutions are charging a very high fee and getting it without any complaints. Without a meaningful fee structure, neither the student nor the teacher is properly motivated. Universities, colleges and high schools should have autonomy in determining their own fees.  The government can use subsidies tied to performance indicators and direct subsidies targeted towards the poor students to ensure equality of opportunity.

    It is important to note that the stringency with which these principles hold increases with the level of education. Thus at the university and college level, all of them are very strongly applied whereas at the primary schooling there may be less room for full fee coverage, diversity in syllabi etc. But is that grounds for the rigid almost draconian control by our bureaucracy? Our answer, again stemming from our experience, is no!

    For meaningful education reform, reverse Pakistan’s "brain drain!"
These salient features of education management in advanced countries suggest the approach that we must take to reform.  Rather than strive for that rapid supply-driven push for universal literacy, let us improve what we have so that the current system is running at full steam.

    While we can begin to emulate the system that has been described above, we will face difficulties because those in education in Pakistan have lost all credibility, the bitter experience of decline having tainted them all, the good as well as the bad.  There are very few capable people in this enterprise and they too have been rendered cynical and frustrated by the current system.
This is why perhaps the most important starting point is to change the management of our education system.  The only way to truly reform the system  is to emulate what the government has done with the banking system: bring in academic professionals with credible academic careers in international markets and hand over institutions such as universities, UGC, research institutions, and schools to them. A large number will have to be imported at a cost that is considerable higher than that of the incumbents. The parallel with the banking system is exact.

    However, before doing so, these institutions must be truly autonomized. This means that there should be no government interference. Even the governing bodies of these institutions should not have any government representation and in this I include the favorite industrialist and the local friends. Parents and interested community members should be on the boards and a number of competent academics. To give further credibility to this autonomization, the governing bodies should liberally include competent professionals from overseas. We must draw upon our professionals who have left as well as competent professors from reputable universities.

    Further credibility can be gained by including foreign institutions in our educating governance structures.  For example, these could include allowing the reputable foreign institutions a say in our management of systems, as members of governing bodies, and in appointing key educators such presidents and chaired professors or senior teachers.
But then what will the education department do? The education departments should be trimmed down to only collect information and prepare an annual performance review of education. This should serve as an independent and objective assessment of the education system and individual institutions. Let us see if they can do just that and compete with firms that will provide the same information. If not, why not save budgetary resources by closing them down?

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