Quality Education is more than just reading books, memorizing and giving exams
Mesum Abbas
Education is an important element for a country’s development, it opens doors of opportunity and a bright future for the people of the country. But education is not only about going to schools and learning how to read and write. It shapes a person’s behavior and attitude and equips individuals with the necessary skills and knowledge to achieve success and contribute to society. Quality education, therefore, is a necessity for achieving global equity and progress.
The United Nations recognized this critical need and included Quality Education as Goal No. 4 of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 4 “Quality Education” aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong opportunities for all. Despite global efforts, the path to achieving this goal is full of challenges, especially in developing countries, where the lack of basic facilities like internet and infrastructure persists.
What Does Quality Education Mean?
Quality Education is more than just reading books, memorizing and giving exams. It’s about creating an environment where every child feels safe, encouraged, valued and inspired to learn. It means having modern learning tools and well-qualified teachers that can make learning engaging and fun.
Education should prepare students for life not just for jobs. A country needs a skilled workforce and Educational institutes should teach critical thinking and problem-solving skills along with communication skills. It also involves building moral values, respect for diversity, and a sense of responsibility towards the community.
The Challenges in Achieving Quality Education
Despite the huge importance of Quality Education for a country’s development, Education systems worldwide face several challenges. In many developing countries lack of funding and investment in education leads to a shortage of basic facilities in schools such as infrastructure, books, computer and science labs and equipment for scientific experiments. The Challenges to achieving Quality education include:
- Lack of Investment in Education
The most important challenge in achieving Quality Education is The Investment in education. According to the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report 4 in 10 countries spend less than 15% of their total public expenditure and less than 4% of GDP on education. The global education sector is marked by a notable gap in funding: In 2022, developing countries spent just $55 per learner as compared to $8,543 for developed countries. This lack of investment in education is causing a shortage of basic facilities in educational institutes. In developing countries like Pakistan, many schools, colleges and public universities lack basic infrastructure and other facilities such as labs, modern libraries, sports grounds for students, transport facilities, hostels, high-speed internet and experiment tools. Many educational institutes are dealing with a shortage of staff and overly crowded classrooms.
- Shortage of Trained Teachers
Untrained teachers are another significant challenge in achieving quality education, as they lack formal education, professional training, knowledge about modern educational methods, lack of digital literacy and formality with IT, leading to poor academic performance, lack of student engagement, inadequate subject knowledge and ineffective classroom management.
- Ineffective Teaching Methodology
Teaching methodology is an important element of education, and when teachers use outdated and poorly implemented methods of teaching the learning becomes unproductive for students.
Many Traditional educational systems rely heavily on ratification and students are required to memorize the facts and definitions instead of understanding the core concepts. This practice kills the Critical thinking, creativity and Problem-Solving skills of students, which are very crucial in today’s rapidly changing world. Students may achieve good Grades in Exams with this method but they often fail to apply their knowledge in practical life.
- Poor policies by the Government
The Policies of Government play an important role in shaping the country’s education system, but poorly designed and implemented policies can act as barriers to achieving quality education. Policies prioritizing the number of enrollments over educational standards lead to overcrowded classrooms and create problems for teachers in managing and controlling the classrooms. Creating guidelines for the selection of teachers as well as designing a curriculum that matches international standards should be the government’s priority but unfortunately in third-world countries like Pakistan these things are always overlooked curriculum is rarely updated and is not matched with international standards and the selection of teachers are done based on favoritism and offer orders are sold for a certain amount of cash killing the merit.
Practical Steps for Achieving Quality Education
- Start Investing in Education
The Government should allocate a higher percentage of their budget to Education and provide the basic needs to Educational institutes such as good infrastructure, high-quality science and computer labs, modern libraries, transportation facilities etc. Collaborating with private organizations through public-private partnerships to fund educational initiatives and projects is a good strategy for achieving quality education.
- Provide training and Support and Training Programs for Teachers
Governments and educational institutes can provide training and create professional development programs to equip teachers with the necessary skills to teach students about modern subjects such as AI and machine learning. This can include Teacher mentorship programs and providing opportunities for teachers to pursue higher education and certifications.
- Improve Teaching Methods
Educational institutes should make reforms and adopt effective teaching methods that focus not only on memorization but facts but also promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills by leveraging technology to enhance teaching and learning. This can include project-based learning solving real-life problems and focusing on more practical than theoretical knowledge.
- Reform Education Policies
The government should revise existing policies for education and establish accountability and transparency to ensure policies are effective. The curriculum should be updated frequently to ensure that students are getting up-to-date and modern education instead of outdated knowledge. The government should focus on selecting teachers on a merit basis and create programs to equip them necessary skills for teaching also teachers should be paid well to avoid corruption.
By taking above mentioned steps Quality Education can be achieved.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Quality education is the fundamental right of the people and is essential for the country’s development and the UN has recognized its importance and included it in its “17 SDGs”, The UN is working to achieve this goal through organizations such as UNICEF and UNESCO working to improve the global quality of the education. However, there are many challenges such as lack of investment, untrained teachers and policies, and the Government should solve them by investing in education creating training programs and improving policies to make sure that every child has access to quality education.
Read: Parental Involvement can enhance the Quality of Education
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Mesum Abbas is BBA Final Year University of Sindh, Jamshoro. Email: mesumabro90@gmail.com
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