Dean's Message

Welcome to the Syed Ahsan Ali and Syed Maratib Ali School of Education (SOE). The MPhil Education Leadership and Management (ELM) program at SOE was conceived in response to explosive growth in Pakistan’s education sector and the resulting rapid expansion in demand for educational services. This often-haphazard growth has led to a shortage of well-trained decision-makers and leaders in the sector, such as school principals, managers of school chains, policy analysts and implementers, and higher education administrators. Empowering a diverse student body, SOE aims to produce a new class of educational leaders that will provide strategic direction to a burgeoning education ecosystem.

Sitting at the intersection of research, policy, and practice, the MPhil ELM program structure underscores the need to enhance research-based analytical capacity in educational practice and offers a curriculum aptly designed to equip leaders in education with the necessary skills to push education reform and innovation forward. An exciting intellectual environment will be fostered by SOE’s teaching and learning center, data and analytics initiative, and entrepreneurship and technology centers as well as by conferences, seminars, and colloquia held by renowned international faculty.

SOE’s MPhil is an interdisciplinary 2-year program designed and led by world-class faculty trained at top universities in the US and UK. Through its flagship MPhil, SOE is setting new standards for education instruction in the Pakistani context with far-reaching policy, management, and research implications across the wider region. The program will familiarize students with cutting edge analytical methods and tools and prominent methodological and theoretical debates from across multiple disciplines while emphasizing leadership theory and its application in education.

The cornerstone of SOE’s MPhil is a semester-long, targeted research-based placement of students in leading educational organizations partnered with SOE. The Practicum will equip our graduates with practical experience to tackle educational challenges in the field and market exposure to build their professional networks organically in collaboration with their organizations’ leaders. Through such networks, SOE’s MPhil graduates will find a variety of options for post-graduation placement such as leading private school systems, development NGOs, government reform and policy initiatives, international research organizations, and entrepreneurship and education technology companies.

SOE invites students with a diverse set of personal, professional and educational experiences to apply. Through a generous grant from Babar Ali Foundation, comprehensive need-based financial aid scholarships will be offered to all admitted students. In addition, a significant number of merit-based scholarships will be available to support the academic aspirations of top applicants.

I invite you to join the vibrant LUMS community as we tackle complex educational challenges and transform the educational landscape in Pakistan together. 

Tahir Andrabi
Dean, Syed Ahsan Ali and Syed Maratib Ali School of Education
PhD Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)