December 14, 2006	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 22, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 13: The Chairman, Higher Education Commission (HEC), Dr Attaur Rehman on Wednesday warned substandard universities to come up with the required standard otherwise their charters would be withdrawn.

He made these remarks at the inaugural session of three- day “International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT)” at National University of Modern Languages (Numl).

“These universities will either be closed down or converted to colleges if they don’t meet the required criterion set for a degree awarding university after June 30, 2008,” the HEC chairman said.

Earlier, February 28, 2007 was the deadline for such degree awarding institutions, the five-year deadline was set back in February 2002. But chancellors committee meeting, held recently, decided to extend the deadline till June 30, 2008. The government has given them enough time, now it was their turn to do some thing, Dr Atta said.

During the last one decade, the country had witnessed mushroom growth of substandard degree awarding universities in every nook and corner without any regulation. However, with the constitution of HEC in 2002, a campaign was initiated against them, and given a five-year deadline.

About the conference, Dr Atta said, the importance of English language in higher education was increasing rapidly as about 95 per cent of the world’s literature came out in this language.

The purpose of the conference, jointly organized by Numl and HEC, is to provide a platform to national and international professionals to share their ideas and explore new strategies for improving English language teaching in the country.

“To compete at international level, both faculty and teachers have to improve upon their English language standards, which currently are not up to the mark,” he said.

The HEC has launched English Language Teaching Reforms (ELTR) programme two years ago, to bring qualitative improvement in teaching of this English language which has achieved the status of lingua-franca throughout the world.

The conference will be an intellectually stimulating event for the participants. “I appreciate Numl for taking a lead in the teaching of local and foreign languages and a special interest that they have shown for improving the ELT scenario in the country,” he added.

He dispelled the impression that the commission is only focusing on science and technology areas. “We have adopted a holistic approach and about 30 per cent of scholarships have been reserved for social sciences and humanities,” he said.

In his welcome remarks, Dr Aziz Ahmad Khan, Rector, Numl appreciated HEC for its collaboration in organizing the conference. He said that this event was a big step towards improvement of ELT situation in the country.

This is the time to realize the importance of English language especially in the education sector. “If we have to compete with other nations of the world, we need to improve the skills of English language otherwise we will be left far behind.”

The conference will continue till Friday and will have two sessions every day. The presenters in these sessions include scholars from within and outside the country. The broad areas which will be discussed in these sessions include “situation with regard to English in higher education”, “current weaknesses in the teaching of English”, “language learning theory”, “teacher training”, “syllabus design”, “material development” and “assessing second language skills”.