Seniority versus Educative Contribution

A state wherein the benchmark of seniority as a teacher is that of the years of service, as opposed to any meaningful educational contribution made towards the betterment of tutees is the one, which has been tearing itself apart. It is that very Pakistan wherein a plethora of teachers spell a ‘primary school’ as a ‘primery school’, and it is one of the reasons which makes their seniority good for nothing since those educators, who make mistakes in spelling even the rudimentary words ought not to have been encadred into the instructional service in the first place, let alone playing with the future of the Pakistani youth by means of their incompetence.

Particularly, this superiority complex of the futile experience can be found in teachers, lecturers, and professors working in the government sector due to the lack of accountability and the sustained job security present therein. Whether one teaches in this sector or not; one still gets paid. It is incumbent upon teachers to get their heads around the fact that any competent preceptor is the one whose utmost priority is that of proffering his disciplinarian knowledge of the major which he pursued to his disciples with the intent to make them excel in that specific branch of knowledge. Contrarily, a sizeable chunk of the teachers has been acclimatised to boasting of their years of experience as educators, which they accumulated by wasting the crucial time of students by taking unnecessary days off, overstaying in the staff rooms during the lecture hours, and gossiping with likeminded mindless and moralless tutors.

Whether a tutor proceeds towards the enhancement of his aptitude (educative qualification) or not, he gets promoted after a specified number of years to the next rank; the worst instantiation of it is that of the teachers of the government colleges across Pakistan. In order to be inducted into the service in the capacity of a grade 17 college lecturer, a candidate must possess sixteen years of education, which is equivalent to a BS or an MA in Pakistan; however, the subsequent promotions to the echelons (ranks) of Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor do not necessitate the acquisition of an MS/MPhil and a PhD, which makes the appointed personnel complacent about their educational qualification and career advancement, which lead to their substandard dissemination of the major-specific (disciplinarian knowledge) to their learners. It further gives them the lame excuse of not continuing their education since they shall be promoted anyway to the grade 20, which is that of a Professor with the passage of service years. Resultantly, it has been reducing the merit of those, who ought to have been hyper-qualified in their relevant instructional fields. There exists, a dire need, to devise the yardstick (standard) on the provincial and the federal level, which mandates the attainment of an MS/MPhil to be promoted to the cadre of an Assistant Professor; the acquisition of a PhD to be promoted to the echelon of an Associate Professor and that of a Professor. The state, so far, has failed to chalk out any strategy through legislation to order the college educators of the government sector to amplify their qualification.

Having an educationally compromised cadre of educators at the college level shall never make the students excel at the prestigious varsities (universities) and Degree Awarding Institutions (DAIs) in the future since the lack of competence of their teachers shall hinder their academic excellence. Consequently, Pakistan shall not have access to a hyper-educated and skilled workforce to contribute towards its moral, societal, and fiscal betterment.

The promotions to the next rank at government schools and colleges must be made upon the basis of aptitude of the teachers, as opposed to their years of service since those who are qualified to the core with the spirit to serve shall make a difference in the process of educating the nation, while the poorly literate and smug teachers with years and years of experience shall merely boast of their total years of service put into instructing their ineptitude disguised as their aptitude.

Everything in the garden is not rosy for the learners at the government schools as well. Specifically, a plethora of the preceptors inducted into the instructional service at the School Education Department, Sindh in the early ‘90s merely had eight years of education, which is not even equivalent to a Matriculation (10 years of education), and have been promoted to the rank of Principal with the passage of service years to further experiment their incompetence upon the underprivileged, poverty-stricken, and unfortunate government school goers.

In a country, wherein an estimated 22.8 million children aged between 5 to 16 are out-of-school, the need of the hour is to prioritise education by hiring the most competent of the candidates into schools and colleges of the public sector; simultaneously, a significant portion of the budget must be earmarked for training the instructors for a smooth operation of the transfer of knowledge to the learners.