On 2nd June 2022, the Sindh Government approved a new teacher performance evaluation format for government teachers across the province. Teachers are now to be judged on factors related to the teaching profession, like student-centered teaching and active classroom management instead of the generic metrics of the Annual Confidential Report (ACR) applicable to all civil servants of a certain grade.

Every government official from Grade 9-16 is evaluated for their performance and given a promotion based on their Annual Confidential Report (ACR), But the problem was that the ACRs of police, teachers, doctors and other government employees are similar. This means that a policeman and a teacher were evaluated under the same generic criteria, notwithstanding the altogether different nature of their work. Teachers were supposedly judged on metrics such as typing speed, financial integrity and observance of security measures, which have little to no connection to a teacher’s role or scope. This meant that teachers were not assessed on their pedagogical skills and classroom interaction, leaving no incentive for them to improve in those areas. Not only did this performance evaluation system suffer from a lack of accountability for under-performing teachers, it also fell short on appreciation of exceptional teachers.

The journey to introduce the Performance Evaluation Report (PER) had formally started back in 2017. Shehzad Roy, President Zindagi Trust pointed out that, “Several education ministers and secretaries have changed between then and now, and with each new minister or secretary, they had to start from scratch, “but we persevered”. As many as three education ministers and seven education secretaries had changed since they started working on introducing the PER to replace the ACR.

Stakeholders from the Sindh Education and Literacy Department (SELD), Zindagi Trust officials and government representatives held several consultations over the years to develop a Performance Evaluation Report (PER) form customized to the teaching profession was developed. The new evaluation form has sections on Classroom Management, Planning and Instruction and Classroom Assessments, allowing for teachers to be assessed on their lesson plans, on using student-centered activities, maintaining regular feedback through assessments, and on encouraging a positive classroom environment, healthy interaction with parents, regular and accurate checking of students’ work, to name a few categories.