AIOU's successful Distance Teacher Education program

Since 1974, the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has been running a highly successful distance learning program for teachers in Pakistan.
This program has been so successful, that it has led to the expansion of AIOU's education programs with the help of international financial assistance from NORAD (the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) and the Japanese government.
In a country where the news about education and literacy tends to be bad rather than good, AIOU's distance teacher training program offers a ray of hope in how Pakistan's educational system can produce quality teachers and, by extension, students.
What is significant about this program is that it has reached students who have traditionally been ignored by teacher training centers, especially women and the Pakistanis from the rural part of the country. Over half of the university's student body is female and close to 60 percent are from rural areas.
AIOU's distance learning program for teachers has produced about 1,920 television programs and close to 11,000 radio programs since its inception. These programs offer Bachelor's and Master's degrees in education, while providing pre-service training for primary school teachers, as well as courses to update skills of existing primary and secondary school teachers.
Cost is another incentive for enrolling into the program. During 1995-96, close to165,000 teachers were enrolled in AIOU's PTC (Primary Teaching Certificate) program. More than 70 percent of them were women. Fees charged for this program are normally between Rs. 150 and Rs 450. These lower fees allow greater access to teachers of quality training.
As the name implies, most of the teaching at AIOU is carried out through correspondence, radio and television. However, no teacher training program would be complete unless teachers were required to also practice their skills in the classroom as well. This is why teachers also have to attend demonstration lessons and workshops in addition to four weeks of practical training in a real school environment.
It seems AIOU's success in this area led to confidence in its ability to train in-service teachers as well. Perhaps this is why this task was delegated to them as well. Since every government primary school teacher in Pakistan must attend a four week training course every five years, the AIOU was made responsible for a Primary Teachers Orientation Course (PTOC) in 1990 where about 55,000 in-service teachers from all over the country receive intensive primary school teacher training. In 1995-96, about 10,000 government primary school teachers were enrolled in this orientation program.
These teacher training programs organized by AIOU are a necessary tool in the challenge of properly training Pakistan's teachers to build the knowledge of tomorrow's Pakistanis. They are especially important since they fill the needs of women and the rural populations of Pakistan, where traditionally, education and literacy have lagged far behind their urban counterparts.
If the above-mentioned sources of finance from NORAD and the Japanese government are used to improve the quality and reach of the training programs, AIOU's distance teaching programs can play a key role in improving the level of primary school teaching throughout the country