When Dr Dilshad Ashraf, an associate professor at the AKU’s Institute for Educational Development (IED), was working on her doctorate on the experience of teachers in Pakistan’s mountainous area of Gilgit-Baltistan, she noticed an odd preoccupation in the research literature.  

Studies on these areas focused on geopolitical matters such as the strategic importance of mountain passes and feuds between the small princely states with no reference to social development and education. This meant that studies on the inhabitants of mountainous areas such as the Karakorum, Hindukush and Himalayas were largely centered on how colonial-era tussles had shaped social forces thereby impacting access to education and the quality of education in contradictory ways. 

This predominant focus on the impact of external forces meant that the effect of internal societal influences such as culture, gender and religion on the region’s educational system had been overlooked and in many cases, disregarded.

“Schools and schooling practices are products of wide ranging cultural and political battles over morals, modernity, development, gender and the rule of law. Contests about the purpose and objectives of education as well as disagreements about who should be running the education system are occurring every day,” says Dr Ashraf, now an associate professor at AKU’s Institute for Educational Development.

This was the seed of an idea that led Dr Dilshad and her co-editors, Dr Sarfaroz Niyozov, director of the IED, and Dr Mir Afzal Tajik, a former associate professor at the IED, to bring together 12 experts who have studied and worked in the education systems of the region, to produce an edited volume Educational Policies in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.  

Speaking about the publication, which took over three years to compile, Dr Ashraf, said:  “Our edited volume looks into both the normative battles over the meaning and purpose of education, as well as the structural impediments to providing instruction in these areas. Insights from the contributors tie into goals 4, 5 and 16 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals that call for efforts to promote access to quality education, gender equality and a more inclusive environment for communities seeking education.” 

Chapters in the volume range from qualitative studies exploring the reasons why girls in Tajikistan drop out of education after primary school, to historical essays about the influence of Pakistan’s ideology on the school curriculum in the country’s north, to case studies of how development sector initiatives such as the Flexible Response Fund in Afghanistan have built support for girls’ education. 

The volume’s authors based their analyses on multiple sources of data, which included field work, personal experiential knowledge, critical engagement with policy and development reports and an assessment of the comparative, international research in the field of education and development on Central Asia. 

The insights and experience of contributors to the book have shed light on the interaction of a variety of indigenous and exogenous social factors that are impacting education policy and outcomes.  

Explaining the policy implications of the book, IED Director Dr Sarfaroz Niyozov states that, depending on their interpretation and application; internal forces like culture, gender and religion can have an empowering or inhibiting impact on educational systems. 

He points out that religion-based education had existed in Soviet Central Asia and became prominent in the post-Soviet context. In many instances, he noted that the Islamic education, tailored by the Soviet and post-Soviet state has provided the ‘official’ discourse aimed at social cohesion and uniformity. In contrast, the religious teaching and learning promoted through informal religious sites emphasised oppositional and alternative discourses, some of which bordered on divisiveness,  and sectarian interpretations.  

Speaking about the importance of the volume, Duishonkul Shamatov, an assistant professor at Nazarbayev University’s Graduate School of Education said: “Without romanticising the realities of local communities in confliction geopolitical situations, this book engages in an insightful discussion around unique educational experiences in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. This is one of the best ethnographic books on education; it is well written and filled with qualified and diverse scholars who hail from this region or who have spent long periods of time in this part of the world.”

Educational Policies in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan is the IED’s eleventh publication. Besides the work on education in south-central Asia, the IED is currently working on two publications covering educational change initiatives in Pakistan. These two new volumes are also jointly being produced by the IED’s faculty and graduates.