Teacher governance factors and social cohesion: insights from Pakistan

This paper explores teacher governance factors, particularly recruitment and deployment of teachers, in relation to inequalities and social cohesion. Pakistan introduced major reforms in education in the post 9/11 context of escalating conflict. These include a merit and needs-based policy on teacher recruitment to eliminate corruption in recruitment and improve equity on the basis of gender, language, ethnicity, religion, and special needs. A 4Rs framework of redistribution, recognition, representation and reconciliation was employed to analyse data gathered from: interviews with teacher educators, policy makers and development partners; and focus group discussions with and questionnaire completed by pre- and in-service teachers. The study concluded that teacher recruitment was driven by concerns of quality with weakly implemented largely quantitative measures of inclusion. Socio-politically grounded measures would be required for a diverse teaching force. Alongside, policies and procedures for transfer of teachers would need to be streamlined so that teachers deployed to schools in marginalized areas served there for a specified period of time.