Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Elementary education is the focus of donor funding ever since Pakistan chose universal primary education as its sustainable development goal. A massive media campaign was launched before the general elections of 2013 funded by DFID and mass media was used to pressurize the incumbent government to take stringent measures against teacher absenteeism and poor results at the high school level. Unfortunately schools are still producing poor results and teachers certainly are attending the schools but with little interest in teaching. This paper explains how mass media was used for coercive advocacy to promote predetermined solutions and explains why those predetermined solutions didn’t produce the desired results. This paper concludes that the flow of money in the education sector of Pakistan is merely a waste of resources until an alternative policy framework is adopted with carefully considered goals and culturally-sensitive measures.