November 28, 2008	Friday	Ziqa'ad 29, 1429

HYDERABAD, Nov 27: Academics at the concluding session of the National Conference on Education said on Thursday that only four million youths in a country of over 150 million were enrolled in universities and termed the number ‘extremely low’.

Noted educationist and vice-chancellor of Iqra University, Karachi, Dr Usman Ali Issani, said at the conference organised by the Faculty of Education of the University of Sindh in collaboration with Higher Education Commission, that the government had never allocated adequate funds for education, especially primary education.

He said that many years ago Unesco had suggested that every country should allocate at least four per cent of its GDP for education but successive Pakistan governments never went beyond 1.8 per cent of GDP.

A German scholar Dr Harold Husemann said that according to HEC reports, only four million youth were enrolled in the universities of the country and in a country of over 150 million people it was an extremely low figure.

He said that a large number of public and private schools spread all over the country were offering education in rural and urban areas. Privately-run schools were charging exorbitant fees, he saidDr Jane Alam of Aga Khan University, Karachi, said that overall impression about education was that it had not come up to the expectations of stakeholders due to a variety of reasons, including quality of teachers education institutes, educational scenario and lack of policy.

Dr R.A. Shah said that changing demographic makeup of classrooms brought into play different sensitive linguistic considerations and had cultural implications for learning and socio-cultural classroom environment.

Prof Saira Kousar of the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University Rawalpindi said that teachers would have to adopt new strategies of teaching.

Prof Sabiha Hameed Rehman of Islamia University Bahawalpur said in her paper that in recent past some of the literacy planners criticised in various seminars the usefulness of adult literacy initiatives and they were of the view that like previous literacy programs it was wastage of recourses.

Prof Farhana Mukhtar Bhatti of Fatima Jinnah Women’s University Rawalpindi said in her paper that the quality of teaching could be improved if teachers were actively involved in the systematic process of action research.

Prof Kulsoom Jaffar of Aga Khan University, Karachi, said that inspection system did not originate in Sindh, but it inherited it at the time of independence.

At the outset, the inspectors were both advisors (supervisors) and auditors, but with the expansion of education services and a need for a more developed and elaborate sys tem of managing schools, the inspectors’ role was expanded to include management and administration, she said.