December 07, 2008	Sunday	Zilhaj 8, 1429

KARACHI, Dec 6: Lack of implementation and ‘governance problems’ are the two main causes of poor performance of the education sector in the country.

This has been pointed out by experts reviewing the existing National Education Policy (NEP) 1998-2010.

Describing the lack of policy coherence, unclear roles in fragmented governance, parallel systems of education (public and private), weak planning and management, and lack of stakeholders’ participation as a ‘governance problems’, a member of the experts review team told Dawn that all these issues would hopefully be addressed in the revised education policy likely to be made public early next year.

Mentioning that in the education sector, responsibilities had been divided at the federal level and between the federal and other tiers of administrations, the member of the review team said that at the federal level, responsibilities for different elements of education were carved up between the Higher Education Commission and the Ministry of Education while other ministries were also running individual establishments and trusts.

He said such unnecessary splitting also existed at provincial levels.

He said in Punjab, the department of Literacy and Non-Formal Education was separate from the Provincial Education Department whereas in Balochistan, literacy came under the department of Social Welfare while in Sindh literacy was part of its provincial education department and hence no mechanism for developing a ‘whole-of-sector view’ at the national level. This lack of unity and coherence was a major problem.

Referring to the policy actions, he said that a comprehensive human resource development policy would be developed integrating all types and branches of human resource development institutions from early childhood education to tertiary education. And this sector-wide planning would be coordinated by a newly created ministry of Human Resource Development to bring together responsibilities for different sub-sectors of education, training and learning.

Policy coherence

With a view to ensuring policy coherence, the official said that the new ministry of Human Resource Development would be responsible for bringing the sector-wide view to discussions for coherence with other socio-economic policies of the government.

He emphasised the need for coherence across many policy domains and said that education policies were linked with other policies at national and sub-national levels and policies such as for early childhood education were closely linked with social welfare policies; education, labour skills, employment, economic and regional development policies; all were interlinked.

Similarly, policies in the higher education area were closely linked with innovation, growth and industrial policies, he added.

Highlighting the plans being made to remove ambiguities in different roles of federal and provincial governments in the field of education, the educationist said that their respective roles and responsibilities would be mapped and clarified in the revised education policy. He said the centre’s role would be of a facilitator and coordinator’s.

Though the NEP was being revised by the federal government in consultation with federating units, the oversight of the policy would lie with the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers (IPEM) Conference which would be reviewing progress and implementation of the policy on periodical basis, the official said adding that clarification was being sought from provinces concerning the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ and the approach to devolution to achieve a greater functional effectiveness.

Moreover, provinces would be required to set up district education boards for managing school education at the local levels while decentralisation shall move to the school level, becoming the basic unit for planning, which would include school-based budgeting, the sources pointed out saying that for this purpose management and planning will be done at school level.