Education Policies in Pakistan: Politics, Projections, and Practices

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