Remedial education programme stressed to address learning gaps

LAHORE:In a talk on ‘Post-Covid inequality: the education access in Pakistan, how to bridge the gap’, Tahir Andrabi, Professor of Economics predicted, “Learning poverty will go up to 79 per cent. Unequal access to learning is real. Around 66 percent households in Pakistan do not use technology for learning at all. We will have to do students’ assessment first. We have to design a remedial education programme to address learning gaps as there is large student learning losses."

He was speaking at King Edward Medical College Alumni Association of United Kingdom KEMCA (UK)'s 3rd Universal Healthcare Symposium held Sunday that allocated a whole segment to 'universal education'.

He talked about Targeted Instruction Programme (TIP) on which he is working to rebuild foundational skills of students and support existing teachers to target instruction at the student level.

"Supporting teachers is important and that requires giving them cost-effective and easy to use tools. There is a need to act fast to mitigate further learning losses," he said. The TIP will partner with 1000-2000 govt primary schools in ICT in all the provinces. There will be large-scale targeted instruction till class 5," he informed.

Another talk on 'Medium of Instruction' opened with a two-minute video of a nursery child whom the teacher is showing picture of an ant and asks what is it called. The child says 'keera'. The teacher insists she taught the name of this keera (insect) but the child cannot recall. The 4-year-old starts crying. He says, 'ask mama or bhai'. The teacher insists that he recalls the name which is 'ant' here. The boy keeps crying. He is visibly in distress. A child's comfort is in home language. Medium of instruction is important.

This is how veteran educationist Anjum Altaf started his talk on Medium of Instruction. "The first rule of coaching is to start with strengths. The teacher could have conversed with the child where he had seen this keera, ask him what he knew about this one, in his language. The child would have gained confidence," he said, adding, "When you are constructing something and you put the first brick wrong, the whole construction will be faulty." "Helping children express themselves is most important. When they go to school happily they will learn new things. When they feel burdened at school, their minds will go for rote learning to perform in the exams.

Noted educationists Faisal Bari, Tahir Andrabi and Noreen Zafar also spoke. The webinar on education closed with Malala Yusufzai, a luminary and her father Ziauddin Yusufzai who have set-up Malala Fund for girls’ education.