Is Aitchison College not implementing the government’s Single National Curriculum?

As schools reopen after the summer break, parents of students at the all-boys Aitchison College Lahore say there is no indication that the school is implementing the government’s unified educational curriculum this academic year.

“So far we have not received any notification from the school saying it is moving towards the Single National Curriculum,” the mother of a Grade 4 student at Aitchison told Geo.tv, over the phone, asking not to be named. “All the subjects, except Urdu, are in English for now. I don’t know if that will change.”

Geo.tv has seen the class 5 textbooks for the subjects of Social Studies and Islamiat at Aitchison College. Both are in English, even though Social Studies/General Knowledge and Islamiat are to be taught in the Urdu language, under the government’s Single National Curriculum (SNC), which has been rolled out across most of the country this month for primary classes.

The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s new curriculum aims to ensure that all schools, public, private and religious seminaries follow a uniform syllabus. The SNC has already been implemented in Punjab, Islamabad and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for Grade 1- 5 this year.

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Earlier this month, a private school in Lahore, TNS Beaconhouse, sent out a letter to parents, which read: “Dear Parents, as per the Government’s directive, the Single National Curriculum is being implemented in all schools from the new session 2021-22. Some of the changes introduced through the SNC like Nazra Quran, General Knowledge/Social Studies and Islamiat are in Urdu…”

Even the textbooks issued by the government have both Social Studies and Islamiat in Urdu.

Yet, Aitchison’s Grade 5 Social Studies textbook, “World Watch 5” published by Oxford, is in English, as well as the Islamiyat textbook, titled “Islamic Studies” by Aamir Mahmood Awan.

Only Aitchison’s Urdu textbook for Grade 5 students has the SNC logo inscribed on it. 

But Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood has denied that the all-boys schools will not be implementing the SNC. In a tweet on August 14, Mahmood wrote: “There is no exemption for Aitchison college or any other school.”

Khalid Mohammad Noon, the vice principal of administration at Aitchison, did not respond to Geo.tv’s repeated requests for comments.

Kashif Mirza, president of the All Pakistan Private School Federation, has also confirmed to Geo.tv that many big private schools in Punjab were not fully implementing the SNC.

“Aitchison is headed by the Governor of Punjab, if the governor is not implementing it himself…This is discrimination,” Mirza said, “Sindh has not adopted the SNC, and neither is Azad Jammu Kashmir adopting it this year. So this curriculum is not single and not national.”

Since the announcement of the government’s new curriculum, civil rights activists, parents and educationalists have raised concerns about the heavy inclusion of Islamic content in compulsory subjects.

Also, despite the government’s pledge to promote quality education there is a marked difference between the quality of the government-approved textbooks and that of private schools.