ISLAMABAD – Federal Minster for Education and Professional Training,Shafqat Mehmood main target in education sector is to enhance literacy inthe country and bring 22.8 million out of school children (OOSC) in schools.
He said special wing will be constituted for this purpose in the Ministryof Federal Education and Professional Training which will enable theenrollment on top priority.
The minister for Federal Education at a briefing during his first visit ofNational Commission for Human Development (NCHD) said that during the last70 years, education has been neglected by successive governments.
“That is why our literacy rate is one of the lowest in the world i.e. 58per cent which is not tolerable. Present government’s top priority is tomake people literate, so that we achieve a respectable status among theworld nations”, he said.
The minister deplored that the aristocracy has established its ownexpensive educational institutions whereas the poor man has to depend onlow quality education in the public sector. He said public sectorinstitutions will be strengthened and improved as to provide bettereducation facilities to the common man.
“We don’t want to make people unemployed but make the public sectoremployees work hard and give positive results. He said this government willnot allow ad-hocism and we want a cohesive, targeted and uniform work inpublic sector organizations”, he stressed.
During maiden visit of the minister, the chairperson NCHD Razina Alam Khanbriefed him about the working of the commission. She said that NCHD wasrunning 5,949 feeder schools of Non-formal education all over the countryin remote areas where 335,164 children of age 5 to 16 are acquiringeducation.
NCHD works with a back-log having Adult Literacy Program, since inceptionbeing a lead agency it had imparted literacy skills to 3.96 adults, sheinformed.
NCHD had recently established a National Training Institute of Non-formalEducation which will address the learning needs by developing learningresources for non-formal education, develop capacity of the human resourcefor delivery mechanism and to conduct research studies which will be valueaddition for the project, she further informed.
Accessibility to education along with quality is the main issue ofunderdeveloped countries which can be only address through Non-formalEducation, which is a cost effective and viable approach, she viewed.
NCHD claims that if 35,000 more non-formal schools are established for aperiod of 5 years, the educational needs of 6.4 million children can beaddressed to bring them in the mainstream, she added.
She was of the view that earlier programs and policies related to educationlack implementation and seriousness. Experts of NTI have formulated aNational Plan of Action (2018-2023) under Ministry of Federal Education andProfessional Training including all the stakeholders i.e. governmentdepartments, international donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)to achieve 100 per cent enrollment and literacy rate in the country.
This NPA includes annually breakup of all its programs which suggests aviable and effective implementation strategy along with a strong monitoringmechanism for measuring success rate of the project.
If this plan would be implemented in true spirit, we can address thelearning need of 22.6 million OOSCs and 57 million illiterates, sheobserved. -APP