English language teaching in religious seminaries in Pakistan: A broken bridge to the future

Abstract

Pakistan has not been able to introduce uniform education system. The country is polarized over methods and goals of education. In the context of language teaching, private English medium schools promote English language while public sector schools rely on Urdu. At the rare extreme are more than 13000 registered madrassas (religious seminaries) where an independent scheme of studies is followed with Arabic at the top as language of religion. The lack of appropriate attention on the part of the government has led to the growth of an independent religious education system that does not teach English language. Thus, the graduates fail to compete in job market that is dominated by English. The current study is a qualitative investigation of English language teaching situation in selected madrassas purposively selected with data generated through 42 in-depth interviews from students and teachers.  The study reveals that madrassas do not have trained teachers and allied facilities for teaching English. The current situation is deplorable and asks for timely State intervention to introduce meaningful reforms with a view to promote English language in madrassas to safeguard the future of about 2 million graduates in the English-dominated job market and to mainstream religious education.