Education Policy in Pakistan: A ‘Then’ and ‘Now’ Situation Analysis of the Country

Abstract

The process of education policy formation is context-bound which requires a vigorous and dynamic analysis of the country background, international scenario and the existing situation of sociocultural, economic, political and education sector of the country. The present article attempts to analyze the situation of ‘then’; The Education policy (TEP)1972-80 and ‘now’; the National Education Policy (NEP) 2009, the policy that has been in practice prior to the current education policy. The purpose of the review is to delineate the journey of education in Pakistan between the two points in time to analyze educational development over the past forty-five years long journey of education. Using the first step of Haddad & Demsky’s (1995) conceptual framework for the analysis of education policy, it was revealed that according to the analysis of the existing situations identified and analyzed with the help of the selected framework, there was not much difference in educational attainments between ‘then’ and ‘now’. However, the two situation analyses show that today there is relatively more development in higher education and access to primary, elementary and secondary education after the implementation of National Education Policy 2009.