June 1, 2006	Thursday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 4, 1427

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ISLAMABAD May 31: New national education policy is on the anvil which would incorporate the educational reforms that present government had introduced so far.

This was stated by the Federal Minister for Education Lt.Gen.(Retd).Javed Ashraf while speaking at the concluding ceremony of a two-day national education conference here on Wednesday.

The minister said his ministry had introduced a number of reforms in one and half year which include restructuring the ministry to turn it into a task-oriented organisation.

First of all he said it decided to bring a uniform education year starting in August for all the educational institutions both public and private.

Secondly, a mechanism to ensure fund utilisation was provided. Other steps included English teaching from class one both in public and private educational institutions, provision of books and uniforms depending on availability of resources up to intermediate levels, new examination system to be initiated from next year, and national educational management data base.

Another most important ingredient of these reforms he said was provision of basic amenities to all the public sector schools in the country for this purpose the federal government has allocated Rs1.75 billion. Due to lack of basic facilities at our educational institutions he said they had the highest dropouts rate in the world, he said.

New curricula and new text books he said would also be introduced in order to fulfil the requirement of good education.

Summing up the recommendations made by the conference the minister said it had recommended an educational management service in order to provide good managers for the educational institutions instead of giving the administrative job to the teachers who were not necessarily good administrators.

The conference also recommended revival of school inspectorates on district level, appointments of teachers strictly on merit, incentives for private sector investment in education. Incentives included tax exemptions, regional languages as medium of learning on primary levels, introduction of NCC training, refresher/teaching courses, disaster management training for the students during summer vacations, etc.

The conference also recommended to institutionalise in- service training for the teaching staff, link promotions to next scale to excellence in various educational fields.

The minister said after introduction of new examination system it had been decided to end examination for class I and II students as well.

Earlier, speaking on ‘the basic problems facing education’ an eminent scholar Javed Ahmed Ghamdi proposed making English, Urdu and Arabic as compulsory languages first to teach science related subjects, second to history and social subjects while Arabic for learning Quran as text.