THE political turmoil in the country is taking its toll on education as educational institutions could not re-open after the summer vacation in Islamabad for the past two weeks and this fire is spreading and reached Lahore on Saturday night when police resorted to teargas shelling on Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf workers.

The PTI and Pakistan Awami Tehreek have been holding sit-ins in Islamabad since August 15 against the ‘massively rigged’ elections and killing of 11 PAT workers by police firing in Model Town on June 17. Both parties are demanding resignations of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

As the schools were to open in Islamabad from August 15, the political parties’ protests and government measures to stop protesters from reaching the sit-in venues literally made the Islamabad residents’ lives standstill.

The All-Pakistan Private Schools Management Association president, Adeeb Javedani, had told the organizational meeting that around 1,500 private schools had been closed in the twin cities since August 15.

He said that over 100,000 students of private schools were unable to reach their institutions, while a large number of students of public sector schools, colleges and universities were also not able to reach their institutions.

In Lahore, most educational institutions were opened after summer vacation, while colleges and universities had started admissions to first year classes. Many private schools, colleges and universities are scheduled to open from Monday (today).

However, the latest state action against the PTI and PAT workers in Islamabad has allowed leaders of both parties to give a strike call all over the country. The PTI leaders have announced blocking all major roads in Punjab including Lahore.

Parents and students fear that it will be difficult for many students to reach their institutions from Monday (today) and are unsure that when peace will be restored and academic activity will begin smoothly.

ONLINE education leverages a web-based curriculum that tracks progress and success using high touch methods, instantly illustrating what work you’ve done, what information you know as a result and what you still need to learn to graduate on time.

This subject was discussed last week at a “Love Learning” conference organized by the Sydney-based 3P Learning & Mathletics Pakistan. This conference comprised series of lectures and workshops aimed at challenging teachers and educators to look differently and creatively at teaching and learning.

The company’s e-learning programmes have been designed by educators and educational technologists in partnership with schools and families.

They are creating resources that are fully aligned with over a dozen international curricula in the subjects of mathematics, science as well as reading skills and spelling and literacy. The diversity of activities, tasks and challenges in each programme instill a sense of achievement and a love of learning in even the hardiest of students.

Prominent educationists – former head of Teaching Staff Training and Development from Punjab Group of Colleges Ghulam Rabbani Shah, educational research scholar Muhammad Akram and teacher training expert for English language teachers Tina Hameed – shared their views about learning at every age and acknowledged that the 3P Learning was giving masses the opportunity of online education.

The educationists focused on teaching ethics, learning dispositions and integration of technology in the regular teaching and learning process through online education in schools as well as for parents, who could also learn from their homes.

Ms Hameed said learning dispositions were different from skills and knowledge and had long term effects on lifelong learning. She said the concept of the dispositional approach rested on the working assumption that effective, sustained change in the ethos and effects of schooling, to develop stronger positive learning dispositions, only happened when many ingredients were present.

She said the educationists had realized that learning involved much more than thinking, and that powerful teachers and learners needed to know how and when to watch and dream, as well as how to pick holes in arguments.

Mr Rabbani Shah stressed on teaching ethics and added that education was a sublime process of discovering the best of a man by learning the worthwhile and unlearning the superfluous.

Mr Akram called for integration of online and blended learning at schools as well as at homes. He said that he used 3P Learning’s globally acknowledged tool for mathletics and that proved to be a huge success during his research study on Grade-IX students.

THE University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences has increased scholarships’ amount from last financial year’s Rs18.8 million to Rs28 million in the current fiscal for the needy students.

UVAS Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Talat Naseer Pasha has told the varsity’s Endowment Fund Board of Trustees’ fourth meeting that the university is also providing free education to 35 Baloch students by waiving fee of around Rs10.88 million.

The Endowment Fund Board of Trustee member, Sardar Muhammad Yasin Malik, who is chairman of Hilton Pharma Ltd, announced Rs2.5 million donation for scholarships to be provided to the needy students of the UVAS on merit.

The Board of Trustees also formed an executive committee of the Endowment Fund and nominated two board members Agha Saiddain and Khawaja Tanawwur Ali Hyder Ali as members. The meeting also discussed various options and initiative on how to increase endowment funds.

Prof Pasha told the board that the university was equally focusing on field-oriented research besides imparting quality education. Currently, he said, over Rs606 million research projects were being executed by the faculty members, which they had won from the national and international donor agencies on a competitive basis. — mansoormalik173@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2014