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Aga Khan Education Services (AKES) |
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The Aga Khan Education Services represent it large
and far-flung set of some 300 schools and other educational
institutions and services in six developing countries - India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. When the
Harvard study was underway there were 196 institutions serving
almost 30,000 children. Nationalisations in Pakistan and East
Africa in the 1970s had reduced the size of the system at that
time but the losses were recovered and the system continued
to mount in subsequent years. By September 1988, the first issue
of a newsletter of' AKES., Pakistan, claimed 186 institutions
in Pakistan alone, serving about 24,000 students from pre-primary
to secondary levels. |
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The Aga Khan schools were originally started to
serve the Ismaili community. A paper on the system (apparently
by Ward Heneveld), given to the Harvard Committee, described
its origins and evolution instructively as follows : |
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" The present Aga Khan's grandfather felt that
the Aga Khan Education Services must provide the means whereby
Ismailis could acquire the skills necessary to achieve a better
life for themselves. The system has always emphasised the need
for literacy for all Ismailis, has sought to provide quality
education to the brightest so that they could pursue professional
careers, and, long before governments and other groups in the
Third World, has sought to provide equal access to education
for girls. These goals continue to be the basis on which the
system is founded." |
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The effort to serve the Ismaili population wherever
it might be has led to particular efforts in rural and remote
areas that were otherwise illserved by national school systems.
Thus, in 1982, 81% of the children in Aga Khan schools in Pakistan
were in primary and middle schools in the Northern Areas and
Chitral, and there was greater pressure to expand enrolments,
schools and hostels in these areas than there was for the urban
areas. At about the same time an array of some 27 day-care centres
(pre-schools) were opened in rural areas of Gujarat and Maharashtra
in India. The system has sought to offer high quality education,
and to adapt to the changing needs of the Ismaili community.
It has not been an isolated system; it has largely followed
national education systems in grade structure, medium of instruction,
and curriculum, and has increasingly been open to non-Ismaili
students so that in many of the schools Ismaili students are
now a minority. |
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This very brief description of the impressive
system under the Aga Khan Education Services may serve as a
reminder that AKU stands in a context of very extensive concerns
with education at all levels below the university. While IED,
as the first venture of AKU beyond the health sciences, resulted
from a general concern about the quality of schools and teachers
there would not have been the same sense of concern without
AKES. Since much of AKES system provides opportunities for children
in rural areas the pressures we have already noticed toward
an AKU concern with these areas are evident. The system is also
one with a proud sense of its quality and integrity. It undertakes
projects and experiments seeking improved methods and curricula
and as such offers an international network of sites
for educational innovation and research. It has special
concerns with opportunities for girls and for "producing a balanced
individual who is capable of enjoying a better quality of life
and is confident and better equipped to succeed in an increasingly
competitive environment" (as the December 1990 AKES, Pakistan
newsletter said). Once a child has entered in the system, there
is a natural disposition to want to make it possible for him
or her to continue. Hence pressures for primary schools after
day-care centres, and secondary schools after primary schools.
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In the strategic planning for the period 1991-1995
there has been a concern to prepare for the step from secondary
to university education, with the introduction in Pakistan of
class XI and XII within the AKES system. For a long time, there
has been provision to enable especially talented Ismaili students
to continue their education at a university and there has been
concern about the general opportunities for university studies
in different regions. The expectation at the various levels
within the Aga Khan system has been that students would commonly
have to continue their education in schools that are not part
of the Aga Khan system. Often, however, there are troubling
regrets about the quality of education available for talented
students. Already in 1983, the Harvard Committee heard of demands
for higher education outside of East Africa from students who
found deficiencies and lack of places in the universities there.
Our Secretary's recent visit in East Africa made evident to
us that the problems there have heightened. Our earlier observations
on the future demand and quality of higher education in the
developing and Muslim worlds suggest that there will be pressure
to expand quality undergraduate education in AKU to fields other
than the health sciences. Our response to this prospect
is given in Sections VI and VII of this report. |
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