The drawbacks of using the time scale promotional formula in Islamabad’s educational institutes

The drawbacks of using the time scale promotional formula in Islamabad’s educational institutes

The Government of Pakistan has finally decided to implement a time scale promotional formula for the teachers, serving in the institutes that operate under the umbrella of the Federal Director of Education (FDE).

The matter was one of the burning issues for the teachers teaching in different educational institutes of the Capital.  The government today on Friday, October 14 has approved the automatic time scale promotional formula regarding the teachers’ promotion working in Basic Pay Scale (BPS) 17 – 20. The formula guarantees a promotion to all the teachers working in all Federal government schools, colleges and Islamabad Model schools and colleges, next scale after a specific period.

Some may welcome this announcement, as it will give relief to the teaching community, while others including myself will be circumspect of the decision that potentially bears negative impact on the overall quality of education and the education system of the capital.

The fundamental issue with the time scale promotion is that it is against the principles of the performance-oriented culture. While, the world sees benefit from establishing and nurturing the performance oriented cultures, we take a step in a reverse direction.

The action will discourage the teachers for taking measures to improve their performance or even to maintain their performance at their current level, as there is no real attraction for them in doing so. Because, whether they perform or not, eventually they will be eligible for promotion to next level after spending the required time in their current scale.

Furthermore, the move restrains the teachers from their commitment to pupil’s learning, developing their knowledge base and enhancing their teaching practices, which is of the utmost importance particularly for the city like Islamabad, where student from different ethnic and social backgrounds study in the same institutes.

Additionally, in few years time the excessive promotions will create a bottleneck issue, as the pool of the teachers from which to select the teachers moving to the BPS 21 scale will be humongous.   This too, potentially is contributes to de-motivating the teachers from working hard, as they will compete with the average and low performers for a BPS 21 rank. All this will led to the deterioration in the educational system of the educational institutes and the overall educational system eventually.

Unfortunately, the new policy will encourage the teachers to religiously follow the “time pass” mantra instead of teaching.  In other words, teacher will be paid for not doing their job but for just passing their time.   Nevertheless, when most of the public sector is being paid for doing nothing, why teachers should be left out.  Even it comes at the cost of the future of the students.

Posted by Abdul Basit Abbasi on Oct 14 2011. Filed under Education, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry