June 23, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 18, 1429

RAWALPINDI, June 22: The federal government has earmarked Rs6,308 million for basic and college education projects during the financial year 2008-09 beginning July 1.

The allocation includes Rs6,269.6 million for projects of the Ministry of Education; Rs23.2 million for projects of school and college education in cantonments and garrisons; and Rs15.2 million for Centre of Excellence for Informatics and production of reading material in national languages.

According to details, Rs1,275 million has been made available for Education Sector Reforms (ESR) specific programmes, which include Education for All (EFA), adult literacy programme; revamping of science education at secondary level, and establishment of polytechnic institutes at district level.

The federal government will transfer the allocation to the provinces and districts which will help the districts formulate need-based projects.

To implement the policy of mainstreaming religious institutions for increasing the employment capability of their output, the project ‘Madressah Reforms’ for introduction of formal subjects in Madressahs has been shifted from development side to recurring side and the process of evaluation of the project has been started.

An allocation of Rs416.6 million under Canadian Debt Swap has been made for capacity building of teacher training institutes and training of elementary school teachers all over the country.

Under the German Debt Swap, Rs417 million has been provided for improvement of Punjab school libraries and Rs244.8 million under German Debt Swap-II for Education for earthquake affected areas in NWFP for rehabilitation of existing middle and secondary schools.

A scheme for providing quality education to the students belonging to Balochistan and Fata by enabling them to study in quality institutions of other provinces is also under implementation.

The National Educational Foundation (NEF) is establishing community schools and skill-based literacy centres in the country for which an allocation of Rs1,500 million has been made.

Funds have also been allocated for training of science and technical teachers of the country. The National Institute of Science and Technical Education (NISTE) will train 600 science teachers of secondary and elementary level and 500 technical teachers of different technologies belonging to polytechnic and government colleges in collaboration with National Vocational and Technical Education Commission (NAVTEC).

In order to bridge the gap between the existing set up in the country and the internationally accredited standards of education, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has undertaken initiatives to establish new universities and upgrade existing facilities.

During the last few years, the main thrust has been to expand the base of education by developing infrastructure to accommodate a higher number of students in the educational institutions.

The HEC is establishing four universities of engineering sciences and technology in collaboration with consortia of universities of Italy, Austria, Germany and China at Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

The aim is to establish world class engineering educational institutions having quality of education and research on par with their counterpart institutions in other countries.

The HEC has adopted a proactive policy of encouraging the sponsors in the private sector to establish or strengthen universities and institutions to make them high quality seats of learning.

Under the public-private partnership (PPP) programme, the School of Engineering Sciences is being established at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

In the outgoing financial year, an amount of Rs18 billion was allocated to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) for development projects.