Education Policies in Pakistan by Shahid Siddiqui

Education Policies in Pakistan

Politics, Projections, and Practices
by Shahid Siddiqui

This book is an attempt to study the education policies in Pakistan in a critical and holistic manner. The book discusses in detail the rationale of education policy and the process of its planning.  It offers sociopolitical context for education policies to understand their processes of planning and implementation. The book selects major themes in education policies, e.g., Vision and Goals, Universal Primary Education, Literacy, Female Education, Language Issues, Higher Education, Technical and Vocational Education, Special Education, Religious and Madrassah Education, Curricula and Textbook, and Teachers and Teacher Education tracking each theme through policies from 1947 till 2009, when the last education policy was offered.

This is a most thorough and comprehensive account of educational policies as they have historically emerged in Pakistan. It places these policies within the social, religious and economic context of Pakistan, and does so both critically and constructively. In pointing out the difficulties encountered, it also draws lessons, and therefore points to future direction of policy in the light of the well-researched evidence. This book reflects a profound knowledge of the educational system, and must be a key reference for everyone engaged in educational policy in Pakistan.  Also, given the global interest in educational systems and comparative education, the book should appear on the reading lists world-wide.

Dr. Richard Pring
Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford, UK

Shahid Siddiqui’s book  focuses explicitly on the real world of curriculum, teaching, and teacher education while directly confronting contextual political forces and factors that affect policy implementation.  Readers will learn more from this book than from many of the worldwide analyses of the gap between national educational theory and practice.  While the book is aimed at a Pakistani audience it deserves an international readership.

 Dr. Michael Connelly
 Professor Emeritus, OISE/ University of Toronto, Canada

This is the first full-length study of a very important subject, namely the history and analysis of educational policies in Pakistan. Among its many virtues are that it looks at all aspects of such policies: religious education, vocational education, female education, education for the challenged and so on. Such a book has long been awaited and fills in a major gap in our knowledge. The scholarly world should be indebted to Shahid Siddiqui, the author, and the Oxford University Press, the publisher, for this landmark study of education policies in Pakistan.

Dr. Tariq Rahman
Professor & Dean, Beacon house National University, Pakistan

AUTHOR DESCRIPTION

Shahid Siddiqui obtained his Ph.D. in Language Education from the University of Toronto, Canada, M.Ed. TESOL from the University of Manchester, U.K., and M.A. English from Punjab University. He has been involved with the educational system of Pakistan as a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher. He has worked in such prestigious universities  as the Aga Khan University (AKU), GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and Lahore School of Economics (LSE). Presently he is acting as Vice Chancellor of Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad. His areas of interest include socio-cultural aspects of language, gender, educational change, and critical pedagogy. His published books include, Rethinking Education in Pakistan: Perceptions, Practices, and Possibilities (2007), an Urdu novel Adhe Adhoore Khawab (2010), Education, Inequalities, and Freedom: A Sociopolitical Critique (2010), and Language, Gender and Power: The Politics of Representation and Hegemony in South Asia (2014).