August 26, 2007	Sunday	Sha’aban 12, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Speakers at a seminar Saturday called for restructuring of the country’s education system which at present was exclusivist, elitist and class-based.

The reforms had to be broad-based to produce men and women with livelihood skills and awareness of what the contemporary world needed and in which direction it was headed to. Only such an education plan could put the country on the path of progress.

The seminar on “Education policies: gaps and lacunae” was jointly organised for parliamentarians by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and the Strengthening Democracy through Parliamentary Development (SDPD).

Noted economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, physicist Dr A.H. Nayyar, T.M. Qureshi of the Ministry of Education and Ali A. Naqvi of the Institute for Development Studies and Practices IDSP-Pakistan, spoke on the education policy of the country.

Dr Bengali urged the policy-makers to broaden their focus from a resource-based development strategy to a knowledge-based economy which a number of developed and developing countries have successfully adopted to hasten the process of development. He lamented the extremely low budgetary allocations during the tenure of various governments in the past and said it seemed that during the 60 years of independence the state never had any objectives in the realm of education and the targets that were announced were all meant for public consumption at home and abroad.

Dr Bengali said that education had to be a provincial subject as the ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy had failed to reduce demand- supply gap which was sharply increasing.

He analysed the different failed initiatives of successive governments and described the findings of a research study conducted in the provinces which listed among the major problems the non- availability of teachers, absence of basic facilities, decrepit infrastructure, stark variations in educational standards in different provinces, increasing rich-poor gap and prevalence of different educational systems.

Dr Nayyar, speaking on the issue of quality education, said that qualified and trained teachers, good learning materials, adequate infrastructure and improved examination system were the minimum requirements of quality education.

He said that early education at the primary level was the key but lack of clear objectives and defined educational goals stunted the process of learning at this crucial level.

He said the existing educational policies had serious social implications for the future of the country.

T.M. Qureshi, Deputy Education Adviser at the Ministry of Education, spoke on financing of education and utilisation of resources. He pleaded for increasing the utilisation capacity of provinces, achieving consensus for a national policy, positive role of legislators in bringing about necessary changes and de- politicisation of education processes in the country.

Ali A. Naqvi in his presentation on access to education underlined the need for public-private partnership and devising a universal education system for the entire country.

Describing the state of the schools,he said there were a total of 245,682 education institutions out of which 164,579 belonged to government and 81,103 to non-government sector; 12,737 government institutions were non-functional, 5,154 did not provide information, 37.8 per cent schools were without a boundary wall, 32.3 per cent did not have water, 56.4 electricity, 40.5 per cent toilets. He said the number of drop outs, particularly in sindh and baluchistan was alarming.

The seminar concluded on a grim note. Unless urgent measures were taken the mess in the education system would stop all processes of development and progress.