Teachers and Their Monitors: Negotiating Disciplinary Regimes in Pakistan

In 2004, the donor-funded Punjab Education Sector Reform Project (PESRP) was initiated to revamp the School Education Department’s (SED) recruitment and monitoring systems in Punjab, Pakistan. Following a New Public Management (NPM) approach, monitoring and disciplinary regimes were put in place to ensure street-level bureaucrats, i.e. teachers, met attendance and performance targets set by the department. In this chapter, we draw on interviews with senior bureaucrats, teachers, and their monitors to document the pressure and states of fear experienced by teachers, particularly women who are subjected to workplace harassment with little recourse to report such behaviour. With little incentive to perform, teachers serve in silence, using their embedded discretion to adapt to monitoring regimes and meet unreasonable performance targets to avoid penalties. We argue though that such discretion serves not to empower, but as a means for teachers to protect themselves from punitive action and administrative overreach enabled by monitoring regimes. More broadly, we contend that disciplinary regimes lead to an imbalance of power within departments, amongst administrators, monitors, and teachers, that makes the latter increasingly vulnerable in their roles as frontline bureaucrats.