ISLAMABAD, Oct 30: Federal Minister for Education Zubaida Jalal has express the hope that Pakistan will achieve the target of “Education for All (EFA)” by 2015.

The minister expressed these views while presenting her first keynote paper at a high level group meeting on “Education for All” at Unesco Headquarters in Paris, says a message received here on Tuesday.

Ms Zubaida outlined the main objectives of Pakistan’s EFA action plan which were to reach disadvantaged populations in rural and urban areas with emphasis on girls and women, to promote community participation at the grassroots level and to improve the quality and relevance of basic education. “The priorities are primary education, adult literacy and early childhood education,” she added.

The minister announced that universal primary education would be a reality for boys by 2010 and for girls by 2015.

She said about 8,250 new primary schools in the public and private sectors would be opened to accommodate new enrollments, and 100,000 primary schools would be upgraded and double shifts in existing schools introduced.

The number of adult literates would increase by 81 million over the next 15 years, raising the current literacy rate of 49 per cent to 86 per cent, she remarked.

The minister for education said early childhood education would be raised from the current 25 per cent coverage to 50 per cent by 2015. This, she said, would involve opening 2,500 early childhood centres in the public sector and 1,500 in the private sector. The cost of these efforts was estimated at $7 billion of which 40 per cent would come from national resources, said Ms Zubaida. The balance, $4.5 billion, would have to come from external funding, she added.

She also referred to the three million Afghan refugees currently in Pakistan, “which places enormous pressures on our own projects for social development”. Some 35 per cent of Pakistan’s population of 140 million lived below the poverty line, she said, and called for urgent assistance “to cope with this problem whose magnitude keeps on increasing with every influx.” — APP