Education activities pre-date the existence of AKDN institutions, going back to the creation, by His Highness the Aga Khan’s grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, of community-based literacy centres for girls in villages scattered across the remote Karakorum Mountains in the late 1940s. In 1946, to commemorate Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah’s sixty years as Imam (spiritual leader) of the Ismaili Community, Diamond Jubilee Schools were established for girls across Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral in Pakistan. Today, the education activities of AKDN extend from early childhood development to operating the country's leading medical university. Its programmes have reached tens of thousands of teachers and millions of students.
The first school of the Aga Khan Education Service, Pakistan (AKES,P) was established in 1905 in Gwadar, Balochistan. Over a century later, it operates 156 schools and 4 hostels in Gilgit-Baltistan, Chitral, Punjab and Sindh, mostly in the rural areas. With a diverse student population, these schools range from rural schools with less than a 100 students to large urban schools.
The first AKES,P schools in Gilgit-Baltistan were set up in the 1940s; since then they have contributed significantly to the increasing rates of literacy and socio-economic development in these mountainous and ecologically fragile regions of Northern Pakistan. It currently operates 148 schools in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral, providing quality education to over 34,000 students, of which 50% are girls.
Through these efforts, it continues to play a critical role in women’s development throughout Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. In the Southern Region, AKES,P operates four schools in Karachi, three schools in the semi-urban areas of Sindh and one in Hafizabad, Punjab, with a total enrolment of over 10,000 students. All these schools follow the National Curriculum and place special emphasis on the teaching of English, Mathematics, Science and the use of Information and Communication Technologies. Many of them are affiliated with the Aga Khan University Examination Board.
AKES,P’s journey, from providing ‘access to education’ to ‘provision of quality education’, entails a number of innovative steps. From time to time, it has pioneered change and improvement in the quality of its services by introducing creative models of schooling, professional development, assessment and community participation – for instance, the community-based school model. Currently, the institution supports over 200 community-based school endeavours throughout Pakistan.
Notably, the alumni of these schools have made their way to high-profile institutions such as the Institute of Business Administration, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Aga Khan University, DOW University of Medical Sciences, London School of Economics and Oxford University, to name just a few. Through an excellent blend of curricular and co-curricular offerings, these schools have proved instrumental in developing the students’ confidence, nurturing their creative abilities and leadership potential, and challenging them to be intellectually inquisitive and socially conscious.
The Aga Khan Foundation works in partnership with governments, school faculties, parents and communities to develop affordable, innovative solutions that raise the quality and accessibility of their public school systems. In Pakistan, it is piloting an education improvement programme in 151 primary and secondary schools across the remote areas of Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral. Interactive learning methods known to transform classrooms and student learning achievements are reaching over 12,500 children and 650 teachers.
In 1995, 16 private schools in Pakistan wrote to the Aga Khan University (AKU) to express concern about the poor quality of secondary education in the country. They identified the country’s testing system as a major problem and asked AKU to establish an independent examination board.
In Pakistan, graduation from secondary school and admission to university is contingent upon passing a test set by one of a number of regional examination boards. At the time, these boards were all government entities. The schools’ request launched a process that culminated in AKU establishing Pakistan’s first private Examination Board, in 2003. While existing examinations largely rewarded memorisation, the AKU Examination Board has taken a different approach, developing exams based on Pakistan’s national curriculum that reward critical thinking and problem solving. At the same time, the Board works closely with schools to provide training, learning materials and appropriate syllabi that help teachers to move away from rote instructional methods and develop students’ analytical skills. The result is graduates who are better prepared to succeed at university and in intellectually demanding occupations, and to make a positive contribution to society.
The Board uses a highly reliable, secure and transparent electronic marking system – the first of its kind in South Asia. Not only does this prevent cheating, it allows the Board to provide meaningful feedback on performance to schools, student by student and question by question. Today, the Board is recognised as a role model, and has assisted government examination boards in upgrading the skills of their staff and their practices.
The Aga Khan University’s Examination Board trains more than 1,000 teachers every year. Over 30,000 students have graduated from Board-affiliated schools in the last 10 years.
The Aga Khan University (AKU)’s Medical College is ranked #1 by Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission according to the latest available rankings. It offers the MBBS degree (the equivalent of the North American M.D.); over 60 residency and fellowship programmes; four master’s degree programmes; and a PhD in health sciences.
The MBBS curriculum prepares graduates to effectively promote health in challenging contexts, and places special emphasis on primary care and public health. Students are required to participate in clinics in low-income areas and to conduct research on the health issues facing disadvantaged communities in Karachi under the degree. Many of AKU's graduates have gone on to study, work and teach at the finest health care institutions in the world. Many have also remained in or returned to Pakistan, to which they bring, as one distinguished alumni stated in The New England Journal of Medicine, “ambitions to set new standards for clinical practice, education and research, and to influence academic medicine, health policy and public health.”
AKU’s School of Nursing and Midwifery was the first nursing school in Pakistan to be affiliated with a university, and the first to offer a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Master of Science in Nursing, a Post-RM Bachelor of Science in Midwifery and a PhD in Nursing. The School’s impact on the development of nursing in Pakistan has been remarkable. Its curriculum has served as a template for the national nursing curriculum and its focus on community health has inspired other schools to follow its example.
In Pakistan, more than 36,000 educators trained at the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) are transforming classroom instruction and school management, replacing traditional methods of rote learning with a student-centred approach that builds problem-solving skills and encourages independent thinking.
Established in 1993, IED is a national resource, and its impact on policy and practice has been significant and widely acknowledged. The National Education Policy of 2009, the national teacher professional development framework, the Sindh Education Sector Plan, curriculum reform in Sindh and at the national level, and textbook development in Sindh all bear the Institute’s imprint. IED was instrumental in establishing numerous associations of educational professionals that are active providers of learning opportunities for their members.
An independent, external review of the Institute’s first 15 years found that “IED represents a unique, effective, sustainable and dynamic contribution to education reform for developing countries”. The review’s authors also stated that teaching, research and service “have never, in our experience in the developing world, been so strategically developed and extensive as at IED".
IED recently completed a multi-year project funded by the Canadian government and the Aga Khan Foundation, known as Strengthening Teacher Education in Pakistan. Over six years, it trained 14,000 educators, community leaders and parents across more than 1,650 public primary schools and teacher education institutions in Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, benefitting more than 300,000 students. In northern Pakistan, the Institute recently worked to improve access and educational quality in Gilgit-Baltistan under the Educational Development and Improvement Programme, funded by the Australian government.
The Institute’s research focus has been a key driver of its success and is amongst its most distinctive attributes. To date, it has granted over 1,400 PhDs, Masters and Advance diplomas in education. In Pakistan, half of all IED diploma and degree recipients are women.
