THE current education landscape in Pakistan desperately requires innovation. Some 137,234 private schools operate across pre-primary, primary and secondary level and this makes up 43.8 per cent of the total number of schools in the country. Among the private schools, there are many variations with economic, cultural and social differences often even within the same geographical areas. Each school contends with its own challenges and works within its en­­closed staff community to strengthen teaching and learning. Not surprisingly, huge gaps arise in performance and delivery.

Very few of these schools tap into the potential that teaching communities offer where groups of teachers in school clusters share expertise, best practices and work collaboratively to build on classroom pedagogy. Although this approach is not new, it is seldom practised in schools here.

Some of the more successful education systems worldwide have upskilled and enabled teachers by operating teaching communities. For decades, Singapore has operated a structured system with top-down support from the education ministry. Teachers are organised into Professional Learning Teams that collaborate on lesson planning, classroom practices, data analysis and student progress. Finland has a collaborative teaching........

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