LAHORE, May 2: Punjab Education Minister Mian Imran Masood has said constitutional cover will be provided to an education policy formulated after a consensus by all four provinces and stakeholders. He was addressing a one-day ‘Punjab Educational Conference’ at the Pakistan Administrative Staff College auditorium organised by the provincial education department. Government officers, educationists, principals and senior teachers of different educational institutions from all over the province attended the conference.

Group discussions were held on “Education: Role of federal, provincial and local governments; Curriculum and textbook policy issues; Challenge in teachers’ professional development; and The role, scope and responsibilities of the public and private sectors in education.” Besides the education minister, the conference was addressed by the federal and provincial education secretaries and national education policy review team leader Javed Hasan Aly.

He said this was vital to avoid useless experiments in the education department. Since independence, governments had been framing policies but they had remained unimplemented as they had been constantly changing them. There had been no continuity of educational policy that had caused many problems in the sector. He urged educationists, education officers and senior staff members of educational institutions to give their proposals for the new education policy.

Mian Imran said the Punjab government had given lead to other provinces in the education sector by its innovative measures that had been appreciated by President Pervez Musharraf. These steps had been taken in the light of ground realities and the problems of the people and professionals in the education sector.

He said the provincial government had allocated Rs54 billion for the education sector in the current year’s budget. The allocation would be increased to Rs62 billion in the next budget. The government was concentrating its efforts on improving the quality of education imparted to the students by providing training facilities to teachers, supplying good books, revising and improving curricula and syllabi.

The minister said the federal government had already taken a decision to double the allocation for education from two to four per cent of GDP at a high level meeting presided over by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. It would help the government, both the federal and the provincial, to undertake new development projects in the education sector with a view to increasing the educational facilities to the students and improving the quality of education imparted to them.

He said the salaries of the teachers were not adequate. A teacher’s salary was Rs4,500 per month which was not sufficient and it should be increased. He should also have a small house.

He said there was dearth of senior teachers and they were not available for the vacancies of grades 18 and 19 posts of headmasters and headmistresses.

Mr Masood said there was no law to regulate the working of private educational institutions being set up in a large number all over the country in the private sector. “Anyone hiring a small building opens a school or a college without any facilities for the students.”

There must be some law to check them, he said.