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| 30 April 2005 | Saturday | 20 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426 |
Co-education to be introduced in Islamabad’s primary schools
ISLAMABAD, April 29: The education ministry is working on a project to introduce co-education in the local primary schools, Federal Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi said on Friday.
He was speaking at a prize distribution ceremony organized by the Pakistan National Commission for Unesco here.
The minister said under the project, only women teachers would be appointed in these schools where the medium of teaching will be in English.
He said English language had been made compulsory in the primary schools in which mathematics and science will be taught in English, whereas all other subjects would be taught in Urdu.
“Over the years, our schools suffered a lot due to faulty policies of the successive governments and required attention was not paid to English as a foreign language,” the minister argued.
He said the country could no more afford to ignore teaching of English, as it would further widen the gulf between the students of the private and public sector schools.
About the annul budgetary allocations for the education ministry, Mr Qazi said he had informed the financial managers of the country to increase it to 4 per cent of the GDP (Rs200 billion).
The minister said the country’s education system needed overhauling to put more focus on analytical approach instead of rote learning. The federal board of intermediate and secondary education has already started working in this regard, he said.
About a recent decision of the ministry, he said, the government had withdrawn controversial syllabus throughout the country.
In this regard, he said a complete consensus had been achieved between the leaders of various sects. “Agreeing to the education ministry’s suggestions, they all have agreed to collectively work towards promotion of harmony in educational institutions,” the minister said.
Moreover, all religious sects have agreed to remove the controversial contents from various subjects and a uniform syllabus should be adopted, he said.
Last year, the Northern Areas witnessed the worst kind of sectarian clashes when Shia community objected to a picture in Islamyat book showing the Sunnis way of offering prayers. As a result, during the last one year all public schools in these areas remained closed and more than 20 people of the opposing sects lost their life.
At the end, the minister distributed prizes among the winners of various competitions i.e speech, essay and letter writing etc.
The minister also impressed upon the teachers and students to follow Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s motto of “unity, faith and discipline”. “I have already directed the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) to display the motto at prominent places in schools and colleges,” he said.
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