Reconceptualizing ‘School
Readiness’ in Pakistan
Sadaf Shallwani – October 28, 2011
Shallwani, S. (October, 2011). Reconceptualizing school
readiness in Pakistan. Paper presented at the
Reconceptualising Early Childhood Education Conference,
London.
Contact: Sadaf Shallwani, Department of Human
Development and Applied Psychology, Ontario Institute
for Studies in Education / University of Toronto.
http://sadafshallwani.net

International Context
International trends
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Universal literacy and primary education consistent goals of
many countries
Globally, more and more children enrolling in primary school
However:
Many children are still not in school
Primary completion rates are still low
Many children move through the system without learning
the skills schools are expected to teach them

International Context
Analysis of grade-disaggregated data indicates:
Highest drop-out rates in Grades 1 and 2
High repetition in the early years
Low levels of learning: many children do not reach expected
levels in numeracy and literacy
One Majority world context: Pakistan
1 of every 3 children will never enroll in primary school
1 of every 2 children who do enroll will drop-out before
completing primary school
Most of the children who drop-out will do so in Grades 1 and 2
The system is clearly not working for children.

International Context
Challenges facing primary schools
Class size
School facilities
Availability of learning materials
Teaching / learning methodologies
System issues
Inequity, poverty, natural disasters, political insecurity

Focusing on Systems
What are the socio-political implications of focusing
discourse and analysis on different levels (individual,
family, community, policy, etc.)?
Many child outcomes are the result of systemic issues.
Focusing the discourse and analysis on the child:
Puts responsibility/blame on individuals/families
Focuses interventions on the child (and family)
Allows us to ignore the systemic roots of the problems
Focusing the discourse and analysis on the system:
Promotes action for systemic change?

Rights-Based Perspective
Children have a right to good quality education
Children have the right to a school environment that
supports their growth and learning
So:
Schools must be ready for children (regardless of
whether children are ‘ready for school’)
Schools are responsible to create an environment where
children can successfully enter, adjust, and learn and
progress.

Need for conceptualizations and
indicators
Education – a global issue
Many countries have explicitly adopted objectives of
universal literacy and schooling in the goals of improving
human and social development
Conceptualizations and indicators of the ‘quality’ of
education systems are perhaps necessary to both inform
and monitor change and progress at micro- and macro-
levels.

Need for conceptualizations and
indicators
Little work done on ‘ready schools’
Need conceptualizations and measures that are:
culturally valid
socially relevant
grounded in context and dialogue
allowing for reflection and change
acknowledging values and assumptions
(Kağitçibasi, 1996; Myers, 2004)

Reconceptualizing ‘School
Readiness’ in Pakistan
Developing a contextually-grounded understanding of
school readiness in Pakistan
What is a 'ready school' in Pakistan?
What kinds of school environments enable children's
success in early primary?
This study examines school-level factors which are
associated with children’s successful entry and
adjustment to primary school in Pakistan, and explores
the socially constructed meanings of this experience by
those involved in it.

Methodology
Quantitative data (36 government schools in Sindh, Pakistan)
School-level factors (e.g., school facilities, teacher-child ratio,
classroom environment, etc.)
Aggregate indicators of child outcomes (e.g., attendance,
retention, learning achievement) in Grade 1
Planned: Multi-level modelling analyses
Qualitative data (5 government schools in Sindh, Pakistan)
Interviews with headteachers and Grade 1 teachers
Focus group discussions with parents of Grade 1 students
Focus group discussions with Grade 1 students

Discussions with Children
Options: playing with dolls/puppets, drawing, ‘just talking’
Playing with dolls/puppets
Pretend play – not familiar
Discomfort with bringing in and then taking away the dolls from the
children at the end
Drawing – tweaks to method
Free drawing first
In some cases, had to suggest starting point of how to draw school
Noted what was what and photographed drawings with children’s
permission
After, gave class colouring pencils and crayons

Discussions with Children
“Can you draw me a picture of you and your school?”
“Can you tell me about your drawing?”
Some questions:
“What do you do in school?”
“Why do you come to school?”
“What are the reasons you don’t come to school
sometimes?”
“Do you remember when you first started coming to
school? What was it like? ”
“What do you like about school?”
“Is there anything you don’t like about school?”

Discussions with Children
30 children
Urban and rural schools in Sindh
Government schools – low income families
Of the 5 schools, 2 schools had an ECE intervention-
Releasing Confidence and Creativity (RCC)

School A: Urban, Girls, RCC
3 girls, 2 boys
Similar structures drawn
for schools
Saba and her sister are
going to school.
Saba: “We’ll go to the
class. Then the teacher
will come. She’ll come
and then make us do
work.”

School A: Urban, Girls, RCC
Laraib is leaving school.
Laraib: “I’m smiling.”
Are you smiling because you
had fun in school?
Laraib: (No response.)
Are you smiling because you
had fun in school or because
you’re happy to go home?
Laraib: (Giggles.) “Both. I
like going home.”

School B: Urban, Mixed, Non-RCC
2 boys, 1 girl
Similar structures drawn for school
Shahbaz at school
What do you do in school?
Shahbaz: “We study. In half-time we
play. Then we have tuition.”
Felt KG and Grade 1 are similar.
Why is it important to study?
Shahbaz: “Because we’ll have papers
and dictation.”

School C: Rural, Mixed, Non-RCC
7 girls, 5 boys
No previous experience with
drawing
Spoke with girls and boys
separately
Spoke with children from different
village separately but discretely
(power difference, exclusion)
What do you do in school?
Dilshad: “First we write akhar.”
“Then we do sabak.” “Then we
have recess.” “Then we do akhar.”
“Then it’s time to go home.”

School C: Rural, Mixed, Non-RCC
What do you do in school?
Kashif: “The teacher does attendance.” “Then
we do slates.” “Then we write akhar.”
Do you play?
Kashif: “We don’t play in class.”
Do you understand what you learn?
Manu: “A little bit. Not a lot.”
Were you scared when you first started school?
Manu: “A little bit.” “That teacher might hit
us.” “Once we started studying, then the fear
went away.”

School C: Rural, Mixed, Non-RCC
Do you like school? Yes.
What do you like about school? ‘Sabak’.
Do you like recess? Yes.
Do you like the teacher? Yes.
Do you like the classroom? Yes.
Do you have any friends? (No response.)
Do you have friends? The teacher.
Any other friends? No.
Is there anything you don’t like in school?
(No response.)
Do you like the other children?
(Whispered) They are ‘kina’ (bad).
Why? (No response.)
Do they play with you? No.
Do they talk to you? No
Why not? I don’t know.
The teacher is okay? Yes.

School D: Rural, Boys, RCC
7 boys
No previous experience
with drawing
Do you like the classroom?
“Yes.” “But this KG
classroom is better.”
“There are toys in it.
There are no toys in our
classroom.” “This
classroom looks new. It is
new. Ours is old.”

School E: Rural, Boys, Non-RCC
3 boys
No previous experience with drawing
Do you play in school?
"No. There aren’t any toys to play
with."
What do you during the break?
"We drink water."
Why do you come to school?
"To study."
Is it important to study? Why is it
important to study?
"So we can get good jobs when we
grow up, and get good pay."

Emerging Themes
Limited self-expression?
Overall positive responses (cultural context?)
School work. Half-time/break play.
Schoolwork mostly “akhar” and “sabak”. School subjects:
language and math.
Akhar: writing alphabet letters (or single words).
Sabak: listening to/reading lessons.
Children at RCC schools perceived some difference
between KG and Grade 1 (classroom environment, play).
Coming to school to ‘study’. Important. Why?
Anxieties when starting school: scared teacher would hit
them
Inclusion/exclusion, power dynamics

Reflections on Methodology
Unfamiliarity with self-expression?
Drawings
Foreign methodology – appropriate? (Is there any culturally
appropriate methodology for self-expression in the context? Is
self-expression itself valued in the context?)
Experience with drawing – frees or limits creativity?
Strangeness of asking children to draw ‘school’
Use of space and colour in drawing
Presence of self, other people (which people), things (which
things) in drawings – absence of classmates and teacher in
most drawings
Balancing group discussions with one-on-one
conversations

Reflections on Methodology
Ethics, validity
Bringing in a foreign methodology – unfamiliar but
children enjoyed it
Perceptions of researcher (outsider, authority figure)
Contradictions between context and methodology
(separating child from context, idea of self-expression)
Hierarchical collective culture (implicit, explicit- pressure,
privacy, gatekeeper), power dynamics
Notions of confidentiality, consent, assent… cultural
validity of ethical principles