'Indifferent attitude of provinces led to errors': Minister briefed on textbooks
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD, April 13: Education Minister Zobaida Jalal was told here on Tuesday that indifferent attitude of provinces had led to mistakes in the textbooks, which recently created controversy in the country.
During a visit to the curriculum wing of the ministry, she was informed that the curriculum wing always ensured the error-free printing of textbooks, but provinces were non-cooperative in this regard.
The joint education advisor of curriculum wing, Dr Haroona Jatoi, while briefing the minister, said the National Curriculum Review Committee had been reorganized, with the inclusion of representatives of all the religious schools of thought, along with the provincial, federal and other stakeholders.
The minister also vowed to strengthen the wing to meet the deficiencies in its working. However, she expressed her satisfaction over the working of the department. Secretary Education Shafqat Ezdi Shah was also present on the occasion.
Meanwhile, the minister during a meeting held to inculcate vigour and enthusiasm in the working of the wing, said the curriculum wing was the nerve department of the ministry, adding that the future of young generation in general, and the country in particular, was dependent on the national curricula.
The minister was presented curriculums of Islamiat, Pakistan Studies, English and Urdu of Class X and XI and was told that no directives had ever been issued to any of the textbook boards to include or exclude any material.
She was further briefed that role of the curriculum wing was very limited as far as the printing, publishing and authoring of textbooks was concerned, as it was a provincial discretion.
The minister, while issuing the directives to further strengthen the curriculum wing said that subject specialists would be employed on permanent basis in the wing with the task to review the textbooks of all levels to rectify any objectionable material, if found.
The minister also directed the secretary to move a summary for the recruitment of subject specialists within a week and instructed him that for the review of Islamiat, renowned Muslim scholars or Muftis from all schools of thoughts should be employed.
Zobaida Jalal warned the officials that no negligence would be tolerated by anyone, be it the provincial textbook boards or the federal ministry of education as far as the curriculum was concerned.
"Nobody is allowed, how resourceful he or she may be, to play with the future of our innocent students," she observed and urged the official concerned to bring to her notice, any matter in which the provincial textbook boards were non-cooperative with the federal ministry, so that the matter could be resolved immediately.
Later, talking to journalists at her chamber in the Senate, she emphasized that nobody was going to hand over the country's Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education to the Agha Khan Board. "One could not even think of handing over the country's education system, which is the driving force behind the entire nation, to the foreigners," she observed.
The minister made it clear that Agha Khan Board would only be allowed to function under the directives of the federal ministry of education and said the board would only be authorized to take examination from the national curricula, which the ministry of education frames.
The Agha Khan Board could not introduce subjects of its own choice in any case and would abide by all the laws and by laws of the ministry, she said.
