ON World Teachers’ Day, Pakistan paid tribute to the people entrusted with educating its children. In his October 5 message, the prime minister emphasised professional training, modern resources and supportive learning environments. He also highlighted the National Institute of Excellence in Teacher Education in Islamabad. These commitments deserve attention. They also invite an uncomfortable question: what should a teacher be able to do differently after completing a training programme?
The answer matters because educational reform ultimately reaches children through ordinary lessons. A curriculum can prescribe critical thinking. A policy can prioritise foundational literacy. Yet each initiative depends on a teacher who can explain an unfamiliar idea, recognise a misunderstanding and adjust instruction. Professional development is the connection between policy ambition and that daily encounter. Its value should therefore be judged where teaching happens.
Certificates have a legitimate administrative purpose. They record participation and can recognise professional effort. The difficulty begins when participation becomes the principal evidence of improvement. A workshop attendance sheet tells us who entered the training room. It does not tell us whether a teacher now asks better questions, gives clearer feedback or helps a struggling reader. Punjab alone has run in-service programmes for decades through the Directorate of Staff Development and its successor, the Quaid-e-Azam Academy for Educational Development. Yet the latest ASER survey finds that only about half of Class 5 children can read a Class 2 story in Urdu or Sindhi and barely seven per cent of Class 3 children can.
Trained teachers and untaught children have coexisted for a generation. The certificates are not the problem. Mistaking them for results is. Consider a hypothetical primary classroom. The teacher asks children to read a passage aloud. Several pronounce the words fluently, but cannot explain what the passage means. Others stumble over individual words. These pupils need different forms of support. Training becomes useful when it helps the teacher recognise that difference and respond: decoding practice for one group, questions about meaning for another and suitable activities for children ready to move ahead.
Such decisions require subject knowledge as well as teaching techniques. A teacher cannot explain fractions confidently without understanding them. Nor can a general lecture on creativity substitute for learning how to teach comprehension. Development programmes should begin with specific instructional needs, using teachers’ own questions, classroom observations and samples of pupils’ work. The starting point should be the lesson that needs improvement, rather than a presentation convenient for every participant.
Practical demonstration should follow. Teachers need opportunities to watch a lesson, discuss why a particular explanation works, rehearse it and receive feedback. They should examine common errors and practise responding to them. A session on assessment, for example, should help participants design a short task that reveals what children understand. The purpose is to expand the teacher’s repertoire of workable choices, including choices suited to crowded classrooms and limited resources.
The harder work begins after the workshop. A method that looks simple in a training hall of thirty adults looks different in a classroom of sixty children. Without support, a teacher may quietly return to familiar routines and no one will ever notice. Professional development should therefore include a follow-up cycle: try an approach, discuss the result, receive assistance and try again. School visits, peer observation and mentoring can help make that cycle part of professional life.
Observation must be designed carefully. Teachers are unlikely to discuss their difficulties openly if every classroom visit threatens disciplinary action. Accountability remains necessary, but developmental feedback needs a clear purpose and a respectful process. A mentor should identify a manageable improvement, demonstrate an alternative where necessary and return to see how it worked. The teacher should have space to explain constraints and contribute to the solution.
Headteachers have a central responsibility here. They organise timetables, shape staff relationships and determine whether professional discussion receives attention. Training them to support instruction should accompany training classroom teachers. Schools also need protected time for collaborative planning and review. Professional growth requires an institutional arrangement, with time and responsibilities clearly assigned, alongside individual willingness.
Technology can widen access, particularly where travel is difficult and provincial departments will rightly adapt any approach to local languages and conditions. But uploading lectures or recording logins should not become another proxy for improvement and provincial autonomy should not become an excuse for provincial silence about results. The delivery method should serve the instructional purpose. A modest resource that improves tomorrow’s lesson is worth more than an elaborate platform that improves a quarterly report.
Evaluation should be equally practical. Programmes can assess teachers’ knowledge before and after training, examine lesson plans, observe selected classroom practices and review pupils’ work over time. Student progress matters, but it should be interpreted alongside attendance, prior learning and classroom conditions. A combination of evidence can reveal what is working, which teachers need further support and which training methods require revision.
These findings should inform public spending and programme design. Authorities could publish clear objectives, participation figures, follow-up arrangements and evidence of classroom change. They should acknowledge uneven results and use them to strengthen support. Pakistan’s commitment to teacher development offers an opportunity to make professional learning a continuing service rather than an occasional event. Appreciation on Teachers’ Day is deserved. Its most meaningful expression is sustained investment in teachers’ ability to teach well. The certificate records a completed activity. The next lesson reveals whether that activity has fulfilled its purpose.
—The writer is Commoner from 44th Common Educationist — Founder of WHI Institute.based in Sargodha.