The article reviews the past, present, and future position of English in the Pakistani language-in-education policy for the Pakistani government schools. The article first traces how the English language came to Pakistan, and underlines the social domains in which English is commonly used at the present time. The article highlights the fact that English has enjoyed the highest social position in Pakistan since the country’s establishment in 1947. Taking this fact into account, the article traces historically the status of the English language in the language-in-education policy for the government schools since 1947 to the present time. I argue that students from the elite and non-elite English medium schools end up being more literate in English and having better access to social mobility than the students from the Pakistani government schools because of the low quality education and the poor instruction of English as a subject taught through traditional teaching methods of imitation and memorization. In order to reduce the gap, although the recent National Education Policy (NEP 2009) of Pakistan has recommended not only teaching English as a compulsory subject in grade one onward but also using it as a medium of instruction in grade four onward for the content subjects such as science and mathematics in the Pakistani government schools, the current predicament of Pakistani public education raises questions and controversies about the successful implementation of the policy. The main suggestion of the paper is the fact that since teachers are the major agents of change in realizing such curriculum reforms at their classroom level ( Fullan & Stiegelbauer, 1991 ), their perspectives, perceptions and attitudes must be sought as well as included in such policy making processes. Because the voices of Pakistani government teachers are overlooked in such top-down language policies, this paper implies that the their experiences, attitudes, and perspectives about the present and future role of English in public language-in-education policies need to be explored to better understand the potential future implications for Pakistani teachers and their education. Such steps not only make policies inclusive but also gauge how far such English initiatives are facilitative in raising the quality of education and developing English language literacy in Pakistan.

中文翻译：

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巴基斯坦公共教育中的英语

本文回顾了英语在巴基斯坦政府学校的巴基斯坦语言教育政策中的过去、现在和未来的地位。这篇文章首先追溯了英语是如何传入巴基斯坦的，并强调了目前普遍使用英语的社会领域。文章强调了自 1947 年巴基斯坦建国以来英语在巴基斯坦享有最高社会地位的事实。考虑到这一事实，文章追溯了英语在政府学校语言教育政策中的历史地位从 1947 年到现在。我认为来自精英和非精英英语中等学校的学生最终比巴基斯坦公立学校的学生更懂英语，更容易获得社会流动性，因为教育质量低，英语教学质量差。通过模仿和记忆的传统教学方法教授科目。为了缩小差距，尽管巴基斯坦最近的国家教育政策 (NEP 2009) 建议不仅将英语作为一年级以后的必修科目，而且在四年级以后的内容科目中也将其用作教学语言例如巴基斯坦公立学校的科学和数学，目前巴基斯坦公共教育的困境对政策的成功实施提出了质疑和争议。该论文的主要建议是，由于教师是在课堂层面实现此类课程改革的主要推动者（Fullan & Stiegelbauer，1991 年），因此必须寻求他们的观点、看法和态度，并将其纳入其中。政策制定过程。由于在这种自上而下的语言政策中忽视了巴基斯坦政府教师的声音，本文暗示需要探索他们对英语在公共语言教育政策中的现在和未来作用的经验、态度和观点更好地了解未来对巴基斯坦教师及其教育的潜在影响。