uality education is a choice. Choices can be painful. The current education narrative in Pakistan is incomplete, redundant and shirking. The derailed development trajectory demands difficult policy decisions, and education is one sphere to focus on. What does it take for a country to make difficult choices to set foot on a developmental pathway?

Talking of choices automatically drags the elite into discourse. While elite bashing may seem reductive, the bottom-up societal change is dismissive and irresponsible as well. Education is a collective societal endeavour; but some have a greater responsibility than others to lead and deliver.

Stefan Dercon, professor of economics at the University of Oxford, argues that countries that have managed to progress over time had an essential requisite of a “development bargain” drawn by the elite consensus to steer its developmental trajectory. The term is used for development at large, but it can also be applied to education. The bargain requires that the elite in the country, referred to as those military commanders, journalists, academics, policymakers, politicians, businesspersons and union leaders among others who have the power to shape societies, politics and economies need to agree on a development trajectory with a defined role for education with absolutely no compromise. It requires skilful leadership to craft national narratives, bear and inflict consequences, build legitimacy and persuade leading groups in society for a pro-education stance. There exist examples of countries that have done this.

Finland is often quoted as a country with the best education system, but little attention is paid to how the country managed to build such a system. Finland took strict measures around policy delivery, teacher accountability, curriculum, assessments and later decentralisation.

For instance, schools in Finland follow a strict ethic of equity and share a common societal character where education and learning are valued. Teachers can only promote a student if the student is ready. Learning is the only way forward. This means that if a student shows any sign of slipping, the teachers will help address the problem. Similarly, the students are only split into disciplinary tracking at the age of 16. Vocational programmes are as prestigious as traditional schools to acknowledge that every student does not have to go to college, but everyone must learn valuable skills. More importantly, money in the education system is not tied to political affiliations. Rather it is determined by school needs. More remote and disadvantaged schools receive more funds to balance the geographical and socio-economic differences. These reforms reflect that education in the country is a serious endeavour and it is serious for everyone.

To reach there, the Finnish government implemented strict top-down accountability-based reforms. One such reform was rebooting their teacher training colleges, forcing them to become selective and rigorous, and introducing strict accountability measures to ensure quality classroom teaching. They also shut down smaller training centres and moved them to respected universities. Along with graduate scores, aspiring teachers have to clear an entrance examination in which only a select percentage of applicants are accepted. The Finnish had decided that the only way for the country to move forward was to select highly educated teachers, the best from their generation and train them rigorously. In the 1980s and 1990s, Finland evolved and eventually began to dismantle its oppressive regulations piece by piece to move towards a more locally driven, creative education system.

Pakistan’s performance has been abysmal across many fronts. The political economy of education compromises quality standards for teaching and hiring. This sidelines the need for accountability and the feedback mechanism. This in turn, is a perfect recipe for an accelerated decline.

A student in a public university was caught cheating, and an instructor at the institute decided to make a case against the student. Hardly an hour later, a minister who happened to be related to the student asked for the teacher to reverse the decision. This practice develops a defeating culture in institutes tied to local politics where students, teachers, politicians, community representatives and concerned bureaucracy end up collaborating in this exercise of performative education.

The same politics is associated with education financing, administration and policymaking, in turn affecting education access, relevance and quality. This, in turn, causes geographical imbalances and education disparity. Pakistan needs to untangle elite capture at national, provincial, local and even institutional levels.

It is pertinent to study the examples of warn-torn Poland, South Korea and other countries that introduced serious education reforms to improve their education systems driven by elite consensus. The grim education statistics in Pakistan are pretty known and commonplace. The need is to have a serious conversation around the role of education and the future we want to tie to it. The elite in power need to realise their role in shaping the country’s politics, society and economy. The foundations are certainly weak. Structural strength is a choice driven by serious intent.

The author is a Chevening and Fulbright scholar interested in geographies of development