LAHORE: Provincial education minister Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan and Punjab Assembly standing committee on education head Engr Qamarul Islam Raja are seemingly not on the same page with regard to the legislation for free and compulsory education for all children in 5-16 years age bracket.

The education minister had last week said the Punjab Free and Compulsory Education Bill passed by the cabinet and presented in the Punjab Assembly in their previous tenures will be tabled in the house again in the upcoming session. But, the standing committee chairman denied having seen the bill approved by the cabinet in its previous tenure.

Engr Raja was speaking at a dialogue on ‘Right To Education (RTE) Article 25-A Learning Challenges and Inclusion of All’ to mark the Global Action Week jointly organised by Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) and Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE) at a local hotel on Monday.

He said there were many issues to be addressed before legislating for right to education, including poverty alleviation and creation of awareness among masses. He said the government should also consider its capacity to implement the RTE.

“What if the government legislates for RTE and then finds itself lacking in capacity to effectively implement it?” he asked. He said the Punjab was in a “state of education emergency”.

Earlier, ITA Programmes Director Dr Baela Raza Jamil gave a presentation on RTE Article 25-A, and demanded the government should hold policy dialogues on the bill to formulate strategies for effective implementation of Punjab Free and Compulsory Education Act.

“The Punjab government should not go for RTE legislation through closed-door meetings with consultants, ignoring the stakeholders, including those campaigning for free and compulsory education for all,” she said.

She said the Punjab Education Commission (PEC) had lowered its benchmark to 20pc for declaring the Class-V students pass. The lowering of the benchmark had increased pass percentage from around 51pc to 82pc. She stressed that the Punjab government should have passed only the 51pc students with 33 per cent qualifying marks to identify the academic rot and make interventions to check it.

With regard to inclusive education for special children, Dr Jamil said the disability rate in Pakistan was about 2.65pc according to a survey conducted in 2012 against 2.54pc of the last census. She said the current population of people with disabilities (PWDs) in the country was around 5.035 million, which was greater than the total population of Hyderabad, Multan and Peshawar cities.

She said the rural areas contributed 65.7 per cent in the total PWDs population compared to 34.3 per cent in urban areas at national level. She said the 58.4pc PWDs were male and 41.6pc female.

Dr Jamil stressed that the government must offer inclusive education in the public schools and bring the disabled children into the mainstream.

According to estimates, there are some 750,000 special children in the province but the Punjab special education department is catering to the needs of only 26,000 children at its 237 schools, centres and colleges. The private sector is also playing its part and shouldering government’s responsibility to some extent.

Responding to questions, Engr Qamarul Islam Raja said the public school teachers themselves were a hurdle in implementing the concept of inclusive education. He said the school education department had already issued a notification to all headmasters, asking them to admit the children with physical disabilities.

He stressed that the Directorate of Staff Development should build teachers’ capacity through extensive training, enabling them to educate special children in mainstream schools.

The standing committee on education chairman said Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had approved overhauling of the Punjab Examination Commission and barred it from holding centralised primary and middle standard examinations. He said these examinations would now be held at clusters and conducted by respective headmasters.

He said the PEC would develop an ‘item bank’ of questions and email the same to respective headmasters, who would themselves develop question papers.

Punjab school education department, Punjab Education Foundation and Directorate of Staff Development officials as well as representatives of private schools and civil society also spoke on the occasion.

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