Reforming Education in Pakistan – Tracing Global Links

The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the major educational policies that have been introduced in Pakistan since 1990s within a global framework and thereby ascertain the impact that globalization has on policy making. Document analysis allows the researchers to understand the various educational innovations and reforms that have been introduced including privatization, decentralization, universal primary education and literacy campaigns along with an increasing focus on higher education. Global education policies have also increased the need to monitor progress in achievement of targets and this has significantly increased data maintenance and number generation requirement. The analysis reveals that majority of the educational reforms introduced have a global perspective as opposed to being home grown and this limits the ability of reforms to achieve their objective.

The study holds that globalization is a phenomenon that cannot be rejected and educational policies that have a global perspective are not necessarily wrong. The authors believe that critical analysis and evaluation of global educational policies must be performed keeping in mind the national policy priorities. The paper concludes that policies with global perspectives are usually well-designed but they must always be checked in local context in order to ensure their successful implementation.