#StudentsofSPP: Waqas Shabir

Before joining CEU's SPP, you were a Political Science undergraduate student at LUMS and you were placed on the Dean’s Honour List during academic year 2014. How did this happen?

Commitment, hard work and consistent struggle: it’s been a difficult journey and it starts with the resolve to be the best. After setting the goal, you need to start realizing out through action and hard work. This is a matter of being consistent even if you come across some failures here and there. I worked really hard and I also used to take a lot of my professors’ time to understand complex issues and bugged my seniors to develop my understanding.

How did you find out about SPP? How did you decide that you were going to apply?

A senior form my university came to CEU in 2012 to pursue Masters in Medieval Studies; I heard about the university back then. Afterwards, last year, one of my best friends was at CEU for Masters of Political Science. He was a great resource.

What would you say your first encounter was with public policy and when?

When I joined the education reform program in Pakistan in 2014, it was fascinating for me how a policy or decision made by an individual shapes the lives of millions of people. The real time impact that you can bring with your work in the lives of ordinary citizens motivates me to learn more about public policy and dedicate my life for this field.

You were working on the reform of the school education sector of Punjab. Could you please tell us more about this and the results you achieved there?

Two main benefits of this program for me were giving back to society and a chance to work for marginalized and deprived citizens. I joined the team to roll out the implementation of reform initiatives in 4 most underperforming districts rife with poverty and volatile security situation. I improved the enrolment campaigns, student learning, school management and facilities in ~6500 schools by conducting the training of teachers, education managers, monitors and leading physical spots checks in ~1300 schools. For example, the availability of facilities like drinking water, electricity, washrooms and boundary walls increased from ~79% to 89% in one of the districts. When I got promoted, I was responsible for ~50,000 schools in 36 districts. I revamped the monitoring routines by introduction of digitised monitoring reports to all the public managers that improved the communication across ~5000 education managers. Before coming to SPP at CEU, I designed a blueprint of making teachers as part of the reform effort by introducing new routines at grassroots level. Now, the province has adopted the program and those routines are rolled out in ~35,000 schools in 36 districts that will strengthen accountability and communication of ~200,000 teachers and ~5000 education managers.

You also made a journey from Divisional Field Coordinator to Implementation Team Lead which must be the result of extraordinary performance and dedication. Could you tell us what the most challenging moment was in your work for the Punjab Education Sector?

I was promoted among the team of 12 coordinators to lead the implementation team. It was a challenge to lead the implementation of reform activities across the largest province of Pakistan, Punjab, but our collective efforts helped to achieve the first results.

What would you name as the highlight of your career so far?

Embrace the challenge, take responsibility and keep on making your contributions. The happiness that you can have by bringing a smile on the gloomy faces and making a difference in the lives of ordinary citizens is priceless.

At the moment you are pursuing a Master degree in Public Policy with a concentration in Governance. Why that one and not Higher Education Policy?

I am pursuing a concentration of Governance as this will equip me with the skills of improving the service delivery of public goods and this include education, health, clean drinking water and so on. This is helping me broaden my horizon on different aspects of social development and public management. I can use these concepts for the higher education front as well.

How do you plan to continue your career once you have finished your studies at SPP?

After the completion of my degree I would like to work in the area of social development with the focus of education and health sectors. I would like to join some multilateral organization to engage with the program implementation so that I can bring large scale and lasting impact in the lives of the citizens of my country.