PESHAWAR, March 15: The NWFP will need Rs58 billion to achieve universal primary education and Rs70.46 billion to achieve 70 per cent secondary education by 2015, while the provincial government can only provide Rs4.6 billion per year, the Senate standing committee on education was told here.

Provincial Education Minister Fazle Ali Haqqani demanded that the federal government should allocate four per cent of the national budget for education and the NWFP in infrastructure development, said a handout issued on Thursday.

The committee was informed that the provincial government had allocated 33 per cent of the current budget for education. The literacy rate in the province had increased to 45 per cent in 2006 from 37 per cent in 1998. Women’s literacy rate had increased to 30 per cent from 21 per cent. In the schools, 68 per cent of the students were boys and 32 per cent girls. The teacher-student ratio had improved to 1:40 by hiring about 40,000 teachers on ad hoc basis, the handout said.

Federal Minister of State for Education Aneesa Zeb Tahirkheli assured the meeting that President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz were committed to raising the education budget to four per cent of the Gross Domestic Product.

The minister pledged the federal government’s support under the education sector reforms and said model education districts would soon be inaugurated in the province.

The senators in the committee stressed the need for comprehensive religious education and suggested inclusion of Quranic text and Hadith in the Islamyat syllabus.

Senators Dr Abdul Khaliq Pirzada, Prof Sajid Mir and Maulvi Agha Mohammad, in the meeting with the provincial education authorities, commended the efforts of the NWFP government to redesign the syllabus within the parameters of the religion.

The senators urged the provincial ministry to make madressah reforms its priority and convince the seminaries to accept financial grants of the federal government to include modern subjects in their syllabus and set up science laboratories.

They asked the provincial government to involve the stake holders in the reformation process of the madressahs.

Mr Haqqani told the committee that his ministry was trying to remove misconceptions about the reforms.

The senators were informed that women teachers posted in backward areas were given one additional basic pay per month and girl students of class VI to X were given a monthly stipend of Rs200.