This test digs into the finer distinctions candidates often confuse: idealism against materialism, equity against equality, formative against final assessment, and the separate contributions of each commission, policy and constitutional clause.
Q1. Which of the following is NOT consistent with idealism?
- (A) The mind and its ideas are more real than physical objects
- (B) Education should develop moral character and reason
- (C) Great thinkers and their ideas deserve serious study
- (D) Values and ideas have no importance, and only matter exists
Show Answer
Answer: D – Denying values and ideas belongs to materialism; idealism is built precisely on the reality and importance of mind and values.
Q2. Behaviourists define learning most simply as:
- (A) A relatively lasting change in behaviour that results from experience
- (B) A sudden flash of insight with no practice
- (C) The growth of the soul independent of the body
- (D) The memorisation of holy texts alone
Show Answer
Answer: A – For behaviourists, learning is visible in changed behaviour, and it must come from experience rather than mere maturation.
Q3. A child’s first language, earliest manners and first ideas of right and wrong are normally learned in:
- (A) The university
- (B) The workplace
- (C) The family, the primary group of early childhood
- (D) The examination hall
Show Answer
Answer: C – The family is the first social environment, teaching language, habits and basic morality before any other institution acts.
Q4. The famous Orientalist-Anglicist controversy in colonial India concerned whether public funds for education should support:
- (A) Only military academies
- (B) Eastern classical learning or English education, a debate settled in favour of English by Macaulay’s Minute
- (C) Only girls’ schools
- (D) Only medical colleges
Show Answer
Answer: B – Orientalists favoured Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit learning, while Anglicists pressed for English; Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 decided for English.
Q5. The moral aim of education emphasises that schooling should above all:
- (A) Produce high scorers in examinations
- (B) Build character, honesty, self-discipline and respect for others
- (C) Train workers for factories
- (D) Teach pupils to avoid all social contact
Show Answer
Answer: B – The moral aim treats character formation – truthfulness, discipline and care for others – as the core business of education.
Q6. Under the 1979 education policy, mosque schools (masjid maktab schools) were promoted to:
- (A) Replace universities
- (B) Train army officers
- (C) Provide primary education in villages using mosques as school premises
- (D) Teach only foreign languages
Show Answer
Answer: C – The mosque-school scheme used existing mosques to extend primary schooling cheaply into rural communities.
Q7. India’s Right to Education Act of 2009 is often compared with Pakistan’s Article 25-A because both:
- (A) Guarantee free and compulsory education for children of school age, in India’s case ages 6 to 14
- (B) Abolish all private schools
- (C) Apply only to university students
- (D) Remove the state from schooling
Show Answer
Answer: A – India’s 2009 Act made free compulsory schooling a legal right for ages 6 to 14, paralleling Pakistan’s constitutional right for ages 5 to 16.
Q8. Floods in Sindh and Punjab have repeatedly damaged schooling in Pakistan. Their main educational effect is that they:
- (A) Improve examination results
- (B) Build new schools automatically
- (C) Increase teacher salaries
- (D) Destroy buildings and materials, displace families, and interrupt schooling for months
Show Answer
Answer: D – Natural disasters are a recurring shock to education: damaged schools and displaced pupils mean long breaks in learning.
Q9. The project method, in which pupils plan and complete a whole piece of work such as building a model village, is associated with:
- (A) Essentialism
- (B) Perennialism
- (C) Pragmatism, through Kilpatrick’s development of Dewey’s learning-by-doing
- (D) Behaviourism
Show Answer
Answer: C – Kilpatrick’s project method put pragmatism into practice: purposeful activity, chosen by learners, became the unit of learning.
Q10. A pupil performs best when she is alert and interested, but her performance falls when she is either bored or extremely anxious. This pattern matches:
- (A) The idea that anxiety always helps
- (B) The Yerkes-Dodson principle, that moderate arousal supports performance while very low or very high arousal harms it
- (C) The law of effect
- (D) Classical conditioning
Show Answer
Answer: B – The Yerkes-Dodson law describes an inverted-U: performance rises with arousal to a point, then declines as stress becomes excessive.
Q11. Education empowers women in a society partly because schooling tends to:
- (A) Keep women out of public life
- (B) Reduce their knowledge of health
- (C) Lower their incomes
- (D) Delay marriage, improve health knowledge, raise incomes and increase participation in decisions
Show Answer
Answer: D – Female schooling is linked with later marriage, better child health, earnings and a stronger voice in household and public decisions.
Q12. In ancient Buddhist education, viharas served as:
- (A) Residential monasteries where monks and students lived, studied and debated together
- (B) Military forts only
- (C) Trading markets
- (D) Courts of law
Show Answer
Answer: A – Viharas were monastic residences and learning centres, combining communal life with study of scripture, logic and philosophy.
Q13. When examinations sort pupils into science, arts or vocational streams and later into jobs, education is performing its:
- (A) Selection function, allocating people to roles on the basis of assessed ability and achievement
- (B) Childcare function
- (C) Building function
- (D) Sports function
Show Answer
Answer: A – Selection is a key social function of schooling: credentials and results channel individuals toward different occupations.
Q14. After the 18th Amendment, the practical effect for Article 25-A has been that:
- (A) The federal government alone runs all schools
- (B) Private schools became illegal
- (C) Examinations were abolished
- (D) Provinces must pass their own laws and plans to deliver free compulsory education for ages 5 to 16
Show Answer
Answer: D – Devolution left implementation to provinces, which enacted their own free and compulsory education acts under Article 25-A.
Q15. In small rural schools of Pakistan, one teacher often handles several classes at once. This arrangement is called:
- (A) Streaming
- (B) Multi-grade teaching, which demands special organisation, materials and training
- (C) University lecturing
- (D) Private coaching
Show Answer
Answer: B – Multi-grade teaching is common where enrolments are small; without training and self-learning materials, its quality suffers.
Q16. Ausubel’s most famous claim about learning is that the single most important factor is:
- (A) The colour of the classroom walls
- (B) The number of pupils in the class
- (C) What the learner already knows, so teaching should find out and build on prior knowledge
- (D) The cost of the textbook
Show Answer
Answer: C – Ausubel argued that new learning attaches to existing cognitive structure, so diagnosing prior knowledge is the teacher’s first task.
Q17. A realist teacher would most likely organise the curriculum so that:
- (A) Pupils study only their own feelings
- (B) No subject has any order or sequence
- (C) Play replaces all academic work
- (D) Subjects are arranged logically and taught by a teacher expert in the subject matter
Show Answer
Answer: D – Realism respects the structure of knowledge: subjects follow a logical order and the teacher’s mastery of content matters greatly.
Q18. When a society adopts mobile phones and the internet quickly, but schools still teach and examine exactly as they did fifty years ago, sociologists speak of:
- (A) Cultural lag, where one part of culture changes faster than another
- (B) Social mobility
- (C) Perfect modernization
- (D) The hidden curriculum
Show Answer
Answer: A – Cultural lag, Ogburn’s term, describes the gap when material culture advances while institutions such as schools adapt slowly.
Q19. In the early years of Pakistan, technical and vocational education was emphasised because the new country needed:
- (A) Fewer skilled workers
- (B) Technicians, craftsmen and engineers to build industry, agriculture and infrastructure
- (C) Only poets and philosophers
- (D) No new institutions at all
Show Answer
Answer: B – Industrial and agricultural development required skilled manpower, so technical education became an early planning priority.
Q20. A recurring feature of Pakistan’s five-year plans for education is that:
- (A) Every target was fully met on time
- (B) Education was never mentioned
- (C) Ambitious enrolment and literacy targets were set but often missed for want of funds, teachers and follow-through
- (D) Plans applied only to foreign countries
Show Answer
Answer: C – Successive plans announced bold education targets, yet implementation gaps repeatedly left them unmet, a pattern noted in every review.
Q21. Sri Lanka’s education system is contrasted with Pakistan’s partly because Sri Lanka provides:
- (A) No free schooling at all
- (B) Free education with free textbooks and uniforms in state schools, supporting very high participation
- (C) Schooling only in cities
- (D) No teachers in rural areas
Show Answer
Answer: B – Sri Lanka’s free provision, including textbooks and uniforms, removed cost barriers and helped sustain near-universal enrolment.
Q22. Reformers of assessment in Pakistan argue that assessment should include formative methods because formative assessment:
- (A) Replaces teachers entirely
- (B) Happens only once at the end of school
- (C) Gives feedback during learning, so pupils and teachers can correct weaknesses before final examinations
- (D) Abolishes all marking
Show Answer
Answer: C – Formative assessment – quizzes, classwork, feedback – guides learning while it happens, unlike final examinations that only judge it afterwards.
Q23. In the thought of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, education (ta’dib) means primarily:
- (A) Collecting certificates
- (B) Learning to earn money
- (C) Memorising without understanding
- (D) The formation of the good person (insan adabi), disciplined in knowledge, conduct and character
Show Answer
Answer: D – Al-Attas defines education as ta’dib: instilling discipline and adab so that knowledge produces a rightly ordered, good human being.
Q24. During adolescence, peer influence typically:
- (A) Grows stronger, as friends become a major reference group for behaviour, dress and attitudes
- (B) Disappears completely
- (C) Matters only for adults
- (D) Replaces all family influence forever
Show Answer
Answer: A – Developmental research shows peers gain great influence in adolescence, though family influence continues alongside it.
Q25. Gender stereotypes in some Pakistani textbooks are criticised because they:
- (A) Show women only as homemakers and men only as breadwinners, narrowing children’s ideas of what each sex can do
- (B) Show too many women scientists
- (C) Use too many pictures
- (D) Are printed in colour
Show Answer
Answer: A – Textbook analysis has found repeated stereotyping, which quietly teaches children limiting roles for women and men.
Q26. The Sadler Commission of 1917 is best known for its recommendations on:
- (A) Primary schools in villages
- (B) University reform, especially the University of Calcutta, including the separation of school from university stages
- (C) Military training
- (D) The abolition of examinations
Show Answer
Answer: B – The Sadler Commission examined Calcutta University and proposed reforms in secondary and university education across India.
Q27. Education for democracy aims to develop citizens who show:
- (A) Blind obedience to every ruler
- (B) Refusal to vote
- (C) Tolerance, respect for dissent, participation and respect for the rule of law
- (D) Hatred of all other communities
Show Answer
Answer: C – Democratic education cultivates the habits that make democracy work: tolerance, debate, participation and lawful conduct.
Q28. The National Education Policy 2009 strengthened the measurement of learning by supporting:
- (A) The closure of all assessment bodies
- (B) Cheating in examinations
- (C) The removal of all tests
- (D) The National Education Assessment System (NEAS), which samples pupil achievement across provinces
Show Answer
Answer: D – NEAS was developed to give Pakistan comparable evidence on what pupils actually learn, beyond board examination pass rates.
Q29. Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) has played a large role in Pakistani education because it:
- (A) Admits only foreign students
- (B) Teaches only medicine
- (C) Runs no teacher-training programmes
- (D) Trains large numbers of teachers and other learners through distance education across the country
Show Answer
Answer: D – AIOU’s distance programmes reach teachers and learners in remote areas, making it one of the world’s largest open universities by enrolment.
Q30. Emotional intelligence, as described by Daniel Goleman, helps learning because a pupil who can manage emotions will be better able to:
- (A) Recognise and regulate feelings, persist through difficulty, and relate well to others
- (B) Memorise dates instantly
- (C) Avoid all friendships
- (D) Score full marks without study
Show Answer
Answer: A – Emotional intelligence covers self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill, all of which support classroom learning.
Q31. Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins are names most associated with which philosophy of education?
- (A) Pragmatism
- (B) Perennialism, through their defence of the great books and liberal learning
- (C) Behaviourism
- (D) Reconstructionism
Show Answer
Answer: B – Adler and Hutchins championed the great-books curriculum at Chicago, arguing that classic works carry permanent wisdom.
Q32. Thorndike’s Law of Effect states that:
- (A) Practice never matters
- (B) Punishment always strengthens behaviour
- (C) Responses followed by satisfying consequences are more likely to recur, while those followed by discomfort weaken
- (D) Learning happens only through insight
Show Answer
Answer: C – The Law of Effect is the foundation of reinforcement theory: satisfying outcomes stamp behaviour in, annoying outcomes stamp it out.
Q33. The idea of education as an escalator of meritocracy means that, in principle:
- (A) Jobs should go only to the wealthy
- (B) Birth should decide every career
- (C) Qualifications and ability, rather than family background, should decide who rises
- (D) Examinations should be abolished
Show Answer
Answer: C – Meritocracy claims that schooling lets talent and effort, not inherited status, determine social position.
Q34. During the Muslim period in the subcontinent, higher learning was chiefly provided by:
- (A) Colonial universities
- (B) Village primary schools alone
- (C) British cantonment schools
- (D) Madrassahs, which taught Arabic, Persian, theology, law, logic and literature
Show Answer
Answer: D – Under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, madrassahs were the institutions of advanced Islamic and literary learning.
Q35. In the Islamic view, the God-consciousness (taqwa) that education should nurture is best described as:
- (A) A living awareness of Allah that shapes a person’s choices, honesty and conduct
- (B) Fear of examinations
- (C) Knowledge of trade alone
- (D) Skill in debate only
Show Answer
Answer: A – Taqwa is mindful God-consciousness: it turns knowledge into responsible action in daily life.
Q36. A persistent criticism of Pakistan’s education commissions is that they:
- (A) Never wrote any reports
- (B) Produced sound recommendations that were then weakly implemented, with too little funding and follow-through
- (C) Recommended closing all schools
- (D) Were staffed only by foreigners
Show Answer
Answer: B – Analysts note a long gap between recommendations and delivery: reports were strong, but budgets, staffing and monitoring lagged behind.
Q37. In the English school system, pupils normally take GCSE examinations at around age 16 and A-level examinations at around age:
- (A) 12
- (B) 18, after two further years of study
- (C) 25
- (D) 10
Show Answer
Answer: B – GCSEs mark the end of compulsory schooling at 16, and A-levels follow at 18 for those continuing in sixth forms or colleges.
Q38. During the COVID-19 school closures, Pakistan’s Teleschool broadcasts on television were intended to:
- (A) Reach children without internet access with daily lessons at home
- (B) Replace all teachers permanently
- (C) Entertain adults in the evening
- (D) Close rural schools
Show Answer
Answer: A – Teleschool used television, which reaches far more homes than the internet, to keep lessons going during closures.
Q39. William Bagley, who gave essentialism its name, argued that schools had weakened because they:
- (A) Taught too much science
- (B) Employed too many teachers
- (C) Drifted from disciplined teaching of essential subjects toward vague activities and electives
- (D) Built too many classrooms
Show Answer
Answer: C – Bagley charged that progressive softening of the curriculum had diluted standards, and called for a return to essential subjects.
Q40. The popular idea of fixed “learning styles” (for example, that some pupils can only learn visually) is treated cautiously by researchers because:
- (A) All pupils are identical
- (B) Teachers dislike variety
- (C) Textbooks forbid pictures
- (D) Evidence for matching teaching to a single style is weak, though varied, well-structured teaching helps everyone
Show Answer
Answer: D – Reviews find little support for strict learning-styles matching, but strong support for varied methods, practice and feedback.
Q41. The rural-urban gap in Pakistani education is visible in the fact that urban schools generally have:
- (A) Better buildings, more teachers, and easier access to books and facilities than rural schools
- (B) No pupils at all
- (C) Worse results in every subject
- (D) No examinations
Show Answer
Answer: A – Resources, trained teachers and facilities concentrate in cities, leaving rural schools at a systematic disadvantage.
Q42. The Hartog Committee of 1929 drew attention to which problem of primary education in India?
- (A) Too many universities
- (B) Excessive spending on schools
- (C) A shortage of English teachers only
- (D) Wastage and stagnation: many pupils dropping out or repeating years without progress
Show Answer
Answer: D – Hartog found mass primary expansion accompanied by high dropout and repetition, coining the terms wastage and stagnation.
Q43. After devolution, textbooks in Pakistan are produced mainly by:
- (A) Foreign publishers alone
- (B) Provincial textbook boards and curriculum authorities working under provincial governments
- (C) Individual pupils
- (D) The armed forces
Show Answer
Answer: B – Following the 18th Amendment, provinces took charge of curriculum and textbooks through their own boards and authorities.
Q44. The Single National Curriculum (SNC), introduced in Pakistan from 2020, aimed to:
- (A) Abolish all schools
- (B) Give each province a completely different syllabus
- (C) Provide one common curriculum across public schools, private schools and madrassahs to reduce inequality
- (D) Remove science from primary classes
Show Answer
Answer: C – The SNC sought a shared minimum curriculum so that children in different systems would not receive sharply unequal schooling.
Q45. According to Weiner’s attribution theory, a pupil who fails a test but believes the failure was due to low effort is more likely to:
- (A) Give up permanently
- (B) Blame fate and stop studying
- (C) Try harder next time, because effort is within her control
- (D) Leave school at once
Show Answer
Answer: C – Attributing failure to controllable effort protects motivation: the pupil sees a clear path – work harder – to success.
Q46. Rousseau’s “Emile” influenced child-centred education by arguing that education should follow:
- (A) The natural growth and interests of the child rather than forcing adult knowledge too early
- (B) Strict memorisation from age three
- (C) Only religious instruction
- (D) The demands of factory owners
Show Answer
Answer: A – Rousseau held that children learn best when education respects their stage of development and natural curiosity.
Q47. A new army recruit is given a uniform, a new routine, and a new set of rules that replace his civilian habits. Sociologists call this process:
- (A) Primary socialization
- (B) Anticipatory socialization
- (C) Cultural transmission
- (D) Resocialization, the deliberate replacement of old norms with new ones
Show Answer
Answer: D – Resocialization occurs in total institutions such as the military, where old patterns are stripped away and new ones imposed.
Q48. The 1947 National Education Conference in Karachi was convened under the guidance of:
- (A) The British viceroy
- (B) Fazlur Rahman, Pakistan’s first education minister, with an opening message from the Quaid-e-Azam
- (C) A foreign university
- (D) The United Nations
Show Answer
Answer: B – Education Minister Fazlur Rahman organised the conference, and Jinnah’s message set out the new nation’s educational vision.
Q49. The National Education Policy 2017-2025 gives priority to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) because:
- (A) Arts subjects are banned
- (B) STEM skills are seen as vital for jobs, innovation and national development in a changing economy
- (C) Pupils dislike all other subjects
- (D) Teachers demanded fewer subjects
Show Answer
Answer: B – The policy links STEM strength with employability and competitiveness, while still valuing the wider curriculum.
Q50. A frequent criticism of low-fee private schools in Pakistan is that many of them:
- (A) Pay teachers more than any other schools
- (B) Refuse to admit any pupils
- (C) Follow no curriculum at all
- (D) Hire untrained teachers at low wages, which can depress teaching quality despite low fees
Show Answer
Answer: D – Low fees are often achieved by employing unqualified, low-paid staff, raising questions about the quality of learning on offer.
Q51. Schools perform an innovation function when they:
- (A) Forbid all new ideas
- (B) Teach only ancient history
- (C) Spread new practices, such as health, farming or hygiene knowledge, into the wider community through pupils
- (D) Close during harvest season
Show Answer
Answer: C – Through children and teachers, schools carry new knowledge into homes, making them channels of practical innovation.
Q52. Bangladesh’s BRAC non-formal primary schools are cited in comparative education because they:
- (A) Reached out-of-school and dropout children, especially girls, with flexible, small, community-based classes
- (B) Served only university students
- (C) Charged very high fees
- (D) Operated only in the capital city
Show Answer
Answer: A – BRAC’s one-room schools brought basic education to poor and rural children whom formal schools had missed, with striking results for girls.
Q53. A pupil who plans how to study, checks her own understanding as she reads, and changes strategy when confused is using:
- (A) Rote memorisation alone
- (B) Punishment avoidance
- (C) Classical conditioning
- (D) Metacognition, thinking about and managing one’s own learning
Show Answer
Answer: D – Metacognition is awareness and control of one’s thinking: planning, monitoring and adjusting study as one goes.
Q54. Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, influential on reconstructionist thinking, argues that education should:
- (A) Keep learners passive and silent
- (B) Teach only obedience
- (C) Help oppressed people recognise injustice and act to change it, rather than merely accept the world as it is
- (D) Ban all discussion of society
Show Answer
Answer: C – Freire contrasted liberating education with “banking” education, in which pupils passively receive deposits of facts.
Q55. One pupil inherits a family business and social standing at birth, while another must earn a position through examination results and effort. Sociologists describe status gained by birth or family position, rather than by personal achievement, as:
- (A) Ascription, where status is assigned at birth or through family background rather than earned
- (B) Achievement, where status is earned through effort, ability and qualifications
- (C) Social mobility, where a person moves between social positions during life
- (D) Cultural lag, where institutions change more slowly than technology
Show Answer
Answer: A – Ascribed status is given, not earned: it comes from birth, family or other inherited position, unlike achieved status, which must be won through effort and qualifications.
Q56. Harsh corporal punishment in schools contributes to dropout because it:
- (A) Makes pupils love school more
- (B) Creates fear and humiliation that drive children, especially younger ones, away from school
- (C) Raises examination scores for everyone
- (D) Improves teacher training
Show Answer
Answer: B – Fear of beating is a documented reason children avoid school, and most education systems now prohibit corporal punishment.
Q57. The Principles of Policy in Pakistan’s Constitution, including provisions on education, are best described as:
- (A) Guidelines for the state that are not directly enforceable in courts, but that should direct legislation and policy
- (B) Fundamental rights enforceable like Article 25-A
- (C) Rules for foreign governments
- (D) Laws that apply only to universities
Show Answer
Answer: A – Principles of Policy guide the state but, unlike fundamental rights, cannot be enforced by courts on their own.
Q58. Wood’s Despatch of 1854 also recommended the creation of:
- (A) A single university for the whole world
- (B) Departments of Public Instruction in each province to administer education systematically
- (C) The abolition of primary schools
- (D) Schools only for the British
Show Answer
Answer: B – The Despatch set up provincial education departments with directors and inspectors, giving schooling an administrative system.
Q59. In Quranic imagery, knowledge is often likened to light (nur) and ignorance to darkness, teaching that knowledge:
- (A) Is useful only for examinations
- (B) Belongs to one nation
- (C) Should be hidden from the people
- (D) Guides human beings out of confusion toward truth and right action
Show Answer
Answer: D – The light-darkness contrast presents knowledge as guidance: it clarifies judgement and directs conduct.
Q60. UNESCO and other bodies support mother-tongue teaching in the early grades on the ground that:
- (A) Children should never learn a second language
- (B) Textbooks are cheaper in local languages
- (C) Children learn reading, understanding and confidence best when first taught in the language they speak at home
- (D) Teachers prefer not to learn new languages
Show Answer
Answer: C – International guidance holds that early literacy in a familiar language builds comprehension and eases later learning of other languages.
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