July 15, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, July 14: The chairman of Higher Education Commission (HEC), Dr Attaur Rehman, has offered financial assistance to the British Council to set up 50 more linkage centres in the country.

He was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of “Hornby Summer School”, a three-week training programme for English teachers, organized by the British Council, here on Monday.

Lauding the role of British Council in promoting English language in South Asia, Dr Attaur Rehman pledged that the HEC would foot the bill for establishing 50 linkage centres in the country.

At present, about 15 such centres are working in mainly urban areas, which, he said, could not fulfil the increasing demand.

In Pakistan, he said, a student had to cross two barriers. “First, he has to understand the basics of English language and second is the subject he/she selects for study.”

He said in the process, some of the best intelligent students ended up as mediocre ones with no significant achievement on their record.

He also informed the participants, arrived from Nepal, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan to attend the summer school, that the Higher Education Commission had constituted a national committee on English to improve the standard of language in the country.

“The HEC is developing a national level project through which English teachers’ training will be conducted, Dr Ata said.

He also offered the British Council to use Pakistan’s satellite set up for educational purposes and to magnify the scope of this training workshop.

He said currently, thousands of teachers immediately needed English language training, which, he added, was an uphill task.

In his welcome speech, The acting director of British Council in Pakistan, Andrew Picken, told the participants about the significance of Hornby Summer School, being held for the first time in Pakistan.

He said considering the increasing demand of learning English, the British Council had organized the workshop.

He also underlined the importance of public-private partnership for holding training courses in the countries like Pakistan taking it as a collective responsibility.

Ameena Sayyid, The managing director of Oxford University Press, Ameena Sayyid, condemned the various forms of piracies.

She said due to this undeterred piracy, the creative writers had been pressed to the wall and with the passage of time they had stopped writing books.

The summer school would culminate on July 31.