August 11, 2006	Friday	Rajab 15, 1427

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PESHAWAR, Aug 10: NWFP Education Minister Maulana Fazl-i-Ali Haqqani has criticised the federal government for getting the draft of the national curriculum approved by President Pervez Musharraf without addressing the reservations of the provinces.

Inaugurating on Thursday a three-day consultative workshop held by the NWFP schools and literacy department and a German agency GTZ to review the draft of the curriculum, he expressed his reservations over changes made by the centre without consulting the provincial governments.

“Curriculum is a federal subject but the provinces should be consulted if the government wants to make any changes in it,” Maulana Haqqani said.

He said the curriculum should have been reviewed by educationists and their recommendations should have been incorporated in it before presenting it to the president.

“The federal education minister and minister of state for education have accepted that they have not studied the new curriculum, so how they can get it approved,” he said.

More than 100 educationists from the province will review the draft of the curriculum and compare it with the old one in the workshop.

The federal government has been holding meetings with the provinces to develop a consensus over the curriculum but the NWFP and Balochistan education ministers had expressed their reservations on the changes during an inter-provincial meeting held in Karachi in February. They demanded that a committee of education experts should review the draft, an official said.

The NWFP minister had expressed his dissatisfaction over the expertise of the members of the experts’ committee during a meeting held in June in Peshawar.

Federal Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi had said that he would consult the provinces and include their recommendations in the curriculum but before the consultation the draft was presented to the president and he approved it on July 28, Mr Haqqani said.

The draft had been sent to the provinces after its approval by the president and they have to send their recommendations in 10-15 days to the federal government, said an education department official.

The provincial minister asked the educationists to review the draft carefully, keeping the national objectives in mind.

The recommendations received during the consultative meeting will be presented to the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal supreme council members on the concluding day of the workshop.

The MMA leaders would raise the issue for discussion in parliament, Maulana Haqqani said.