January 3, 2006	Tuesday	Zilhaj 2, 1426

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 2: A non-profit organization has criticized working of the Senate Standing Committee on Education and called for its more proactive role instead of just taking briefings from various education departments.

The Centre for Peace and Development Initiative (CPID) has prepared a report based on the data collected from various sources and covered 21 meetings of the committee held between May 2004 and September 2005.

The committee, during these meetings, mainly restricted to issues such as controversies related to curriculum; criteria for opening private universities, higher education sector and scientific research.

However, it is not clear whether the committee can make any significant contribution to these issues by providing competent guidance for improvement in relevant policies and ensuring their efficient monitoring, the report underlined.

The Senate education committee has 12 members headed by Razina Alam Khan, whereas the quorum requirement for the committee is only three members. In many legislative systems around the world, most of the business is actually handled by the parliamentary committees.

The Senate body’s role is critical in view of the fact that there exists serious challenges in context of public sector education system, which needs to be effectively addressed in achieving the goals of universal literacy and producing high quality workforce to meet national requirement.

The committee spent most of its time receiving briefings from different education departments of the federal government. There were very few instances where it could proactively identify issues and make specific recommendations to effectively deal with them. Recommendations made by the committee were mostly of a very general nature, the report says.

In order to make precise and competent recommendations and play a more effective legislative oversight role, the committee needed to look deeper into the functioning of the ministry and departments and their performance vis-a-vis targets established under the education policy.

The committee always relied upon the data provided by the government organizations. It seemed that the committee made no effort to collect views and information from other stakeholders like parents, teachers’ associations, students, civil society groups or independent experts.

The only exception was the case of the committee’s investigation into the criteria notified by the HEC for private universities. In this case, the committee members apparently visited some private universities and collected their feedback on the subject. But here too, only two stakeholders, the HEC and management of private universities, were consulted; while views of parents, students, independent experts or civil society groups were not solicited.

This style of working involves significant risks and may result in recommendations, which are lopsided, unbalanced and made as a result of poor information, the report added.

All meetings of the committee were held in camera, and members of the public or media were not allowed to observe its proceedings. Under the rules, the committee can decide to hold its meetings in the open but no such initiative was taken by the committee.

By organizing its meetings in the open, the committee can demonstrate its commitment to transparency and, thereby, contribute to development of conditions wherein people take interest in the committee’s proceedings, make useful inputs and support its good initiatives, it said.

The committee took little interest in examining the use of funds allocated to the ministry, attached departments or related autonomous institutions in the annual budget. As a result, the committee’s role in scrutinizing the use of past year’s allocations against specific targets or developing next year’s budget is virtually negligible. The committee failed to take any significant initiative to identify lacunas resulting in corrupt or inefficient practices and then make competent recommendations.

Similarly, it appears that the committee felt no need of recommending new legislation or introducing amendments to existing laws governing the education sector in the country.

The committee made a large number of recommendations about increased allocations for certain programmes or departments.

It is, however, not known whether any of these was fully implemented. It seems that the committee has no mechanism in place to monitor compliance with its recommendations.

The committee would set a good example if it starts publishing annual reports, which provide information about issues taken up; stakeholders consulted; public hearings organized; recommendations made; how many of its recommendations were implemented; and actions it took on recommendations that were not implemented by the departments concerned.