Challenges of Educational Leadership in Pakistan

 By Sumaira Feroz

Educational leadership refers to the social and psychological settings where groups of people are led in terms of ideologies and philosophical concepts.  Educational leadership is much of influential leadership than managerial because academic departments are communities that have exclusive practices and beliefs. It is also different from political leadership as Pakistani academic leaders are answerable to the government, board of governors or Higher Education Commission (HEC), not to the general public. The academic leadership also represents the functions and responsibilities of top managers, deans, chancellors, principals, school heads and others who are responsible for decision-making at different levels. However, the department chair as the leader of this community plays a very critical leadership role in transmitting the academic values and effects the achievements of the objectives and well-being of the employees and the organization that can bring a significant difference to educational institutions.

But Academic Leadership anywhere in the world is a challenge, particularly in the developing world like Pakistan is a whole new ball game for several reasons. These reasons are as old as this country for instance education is not a priority and small budgets are allocated to the education sectors. The budget is too low that universities even cannot afford permanent competent teachers and compromise to provide standard education to the learners. So, due to a lack of full-time faculty members, universities are left with no option other than to hire contractual teachers to run classes on regular basis. These teachers usually leave universities to avail better opportunities at private universities. Thus financial crunches affect the academic leadership to enhance the quality of education in institutions. Therefore, grooming, and capacity building, of academia just has not happened and when they reached these top positions, they do that with very little experience and little training essentially in societies that need it the most. 

The whole idea that academic leadership is about mentorship, handholding, ownership building, and grooming others does not exist. It is usually translated as middleman management. That is why usually academic leaders’ behaviour does not allow the versity or seats of learning to grow the way they should.

The school leadership and capacity buildings have also been ignored in the public sector. There is a lack of academic leadership to teach the learners according to the demands and requisites of education in 21 century because of less awareness about modern development, teaching techniques and methods. Furthermore, changes in teaching practices are often challenged and hindered by the lack of knowledge and commitment on the part of parents, school heads, principals and teachers because education plus the quality of education has never been a priority of this country since the beginning. It has also been observed that most of the head teachers also lack essential leadership skills as they are selected based on their years of teaching experience only. Hence, they are mostly unable to make a difference in learners’ lives because of a lack of awareness, training, incompetent management and incompetent teachers.

On the contrary, the present century has posed even more challenging demands on the educational system of Pakistan. It should be reformed and renovated to fulfil the requirements of well-informed young individuals living in the era of the digitalized world. The old methods and absolute obedience with absolute silence and absence of questions in the classrooms create only the slavish mentality, whereas the existence of critical thinking, problem-solving skills, effective communication, knowing how to collaborate with others and creativity is a much-needed tool to learn and teach in the education sector and this is the only way in contributing to solve the socio-political problems of modern-day Pakistan. 

Thus there is a need for capacity building, there is a need to understand that academic leadership is very different from the corporate level. As Prof. Dr Huma Baqai being an educationist often says that “ you know taking the faculty forward or making the faculty do things that you want them to do is like herding cats.” She further says that “people with independent minds do more and there should be academic freedom but at the same time lot needs to be done there as well.” Therefore, academic leadership need to be taken at a serious level and there is a need to differentiate it from corporate leadership.

 It is also essential to understand that the requirements and needs of academic leadership are very different from how it is understood and how it is delivered today. So, any capacity building on the front is needed at all levels. International exposure for a country like Pakistan is extremely critical. Institutions even today are working like high schools. The culture of research and knowledge creation is still new and things must be incorporated into university teaching. It is critical that there is a bottom-up approach and we have also a top-down approach and this thing will perhaps close the gap that exists in taking universities, on making universities on the work they should bring them at the bar to international standard. Sadly, none of the universities has international ranking here because people are not aware of what is international ranking. So, it needs to be done to acquire what is the research culture, what is university teaching, and what is university and school beyond the classroom. These are the things that academic leadership needs to be groomed in and need to be factored in that delivery happens which will bring change in the fate of the developing world, especially for countries like Pakistan.

“The most important rule of educational leadership is

to always remember that people, not policies or programs,

are what highly drive effective schools” (PJ Caposey)