LAHORE, June 7: Punjab Director Public Instruction (Colleges) Dr Imtiaz Ahmad Cheema said on Saturday updated curricula and motivated teachers could improve the standards of education.

He was speaking at the concluding session of a six-day refresher course organized for psychology teachers by the Higher Education Commission’s regional centre here on Saturday.

Dr Cheema said there was a need to focus on higher education, which remained a neglected area since the creation of Pakistan. He said all the education policies had focused on literacy, and primary and school education with the allocation of almost 80 per cent resources. Even then, he regretted, the country’s literacy rate could not exceed 10 per cent.

He said the government had started paying attention to the higher education that would help achieve the objectives fixed by various higher education commissions. He hoped that the focus on higher education would also help to restore the credibility of knowledge imparted here and degrees given to students.

Regretting that the Pakistani degrees have lost recognition at international level, he said there was a need to revitalize the higher education sector to restore the credibility of our education and degrees. He also stressed that focus should be on quality instead of quantity of education.

Dr Cheema said the teachers must go for demand-oriented rather than supply-oriented education. He said thousands of doctors and engineers had been produced in the country, but a majority of them remained jobless. He added that such a situation created frustration among the youth.

He urged the teachers to keep in touch with the developments taking place in their subjects to stay up-to-date. He said the HEC’s refresher course would improve the teachers’ professional development, subject knowledge and methodologies. The Punjab education department would also launch a teachers’ training programme soon, he said.

Earlier, HEC regional centre director Muhammad Riaz Cheema said the commission was giving due importance to professional growth of teachers. He said the commission had initiated a plan, and it was negotiating with the government to establish a specialized teachers’ training centre for the universities.

Mr Cheema said the HEC was aware of emerging needs of various subjects and it revised curricula of all subjects every three years. “The changes in curriculum also lead to identify the need for training of teachers,” he added.

Course coordinator Dr Akhtar Qureshi also spoke on the occasion.

As many as 31 psychology teachers from different colleges and universities in the province attended the course.