Better teaching practices raise pupil achievement in Pakistan

An important way to improve student achievement is to improve weak teaching. What factors are the most important for improving teaching – teachers’ resumé characteristics (their training, qualifications and experience) or their classroom practices.

A study from the Universities of Oxford and London, inthe UK, has investigated what teacher practices and characteristics matter mostfor improving pupil achievement. Past studies have examined the influence ofteacher training, qualifications and experience on student achievement, but therelevance of classroom practices and teaching techniques in raising achievementlevels has rarely been tested. The study does the analysis in both private andpublic school systems in Pakistan.

Previousstudies have found that pupil achievement is often not affected by the standardteacher characteristics such as certification, training and experience. Nevertheless,such teacher traits are popularly used as indicators of teacher ‘quality’ andto determine teacher pay. This research disputes this: if more able and ambitiousstudents choose to study in schools where teachers have higher certification,training and experience, then any effect from higher qualifications on studentachievement may in fact be because smarter children happen to be taught by morequalified teachers. In this case, there will be a positive link between teacherqualifications and student achievement and yet better achievement is notnecessarily a result of higher teacher qualifications.

This study estimates the effects of teachercharacteristics as well as of teaching practices on pupil achievement byexamining achievement variation across subjects for the same pupil, andrelating that to the characteristics and teaching practices of the teachers whoteach the different subjects. It uses data on nearly 2,000 students of grade 8 froma survey of 65 schools (25 government and 40 private)in urban and rural areas of Lahore district in Punjabprovince, Pakistan,from 2002 to 2003. The data matches students’ language and mathematics testresults to the teachers teaching those subjects. The researchers found that:

• Most of the standard teacher resumé characteristics(like training and qualifications) do not affect students’ achievement atschool. This means that teachers (especially in government schools) arerewarded for characteristics that do not improve pupil achievement.
• Girls benefit from being taught by female teachers.
• The teaching process (time on different classroom tasks) used byindividual teachers has a strong impact on student achievement. Pupils benefitsubstantially from lesson planning, being asked questions during class andbeing quizzed on previous lessons.
• In the government schooling system, the better schools hire more‘effective’ teachers, such as those with better English language skills and whospend more time quizzing students on past material.
• Good private schools also hire more ‘effective’ teachers but pupil achievementdepends on a teaching methodology that promotes pupil testing and aninteractive teaching approach in lessons. They retain the more effectiveteachers by extending their contracts.

Thestudy suggests the following policy changes:

• As girls profit frombeing taught by female teachers, it would be efficient to encouragegreater female participation in the teaching profession, and especially inschools where girls are taught.
• The fact that teachersare being rewarded for characteristics unconnected to pupil achievementhighlights the need for reform of teacher pay structures.