February 05, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 26, 1429

KARACHI, Feb 4: Caretaker Federal Education Minister Shamsh Kassim-Lakha has said that the decision on when to begin the new academic year has been left to the coming elected government and as such there will be no change in the current academic session, which will begin in August.

Mr Lakha, who presided over the 12th inter-provincial conference held here on Monday at the new Sindh Secretariat, was briefing newsmen about the decisions taken at the meeting. Present on the occasion were all the four caretaker provincial education ministers, the secretaries concerned and other high officials.

He said the conference had “very fruitful, positive and detailed discussions” on the question whether to begin the new academic session in August or at the end of March.

During the discussion, representatives of the textbook and examination boards, Fata, Jammu and Kashmir and provincial governments raised many points, and “very effective arguments were put forward in support of the change”.

However, there was a consensus that being caretaker governments they did not enjoy the authority to make changes in the academic session, and decided to leave it to an elected government, which would be there after two weeks.

It was also observed that before taking a decision to change the academic session, there was a need to have proper studies to take into account how many days would be left for education, the weather conditions and genuine complaints as were put forward.

The conference decided to give four weeks to carry out a scientific study and prepare a report to present to the new elected government, which would have the privilege of taking a final decision in the light of the report.

He said there were two major considerations in continuing with the current academic year. One, if at this stage the academic year was changed, there would be a loss of 47 days, which would affect students badly. And that even the textbooks would not be available so soon.

The minister also said that under the new scheme of studies, there was a complete agreement among all the four provinces to begin it in 2008-09.