Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Monday inaugurated the 100/100/100 education programme targeting 100 per cent enrolment, retention and graduation of children in schools in Islamabad and hoped that the initiative would also be emulated by the provinces.

The 100/100/100 programme was first mentioned in the annual budget speech by Finance Minister Miftah Ismail, who had said: "This is a national commitment that I make today to the children of Pakistan. We will educate you."

The PM, addressing a launch ceremony for the new curriculum and textbooks by the Federal Ministry of Professional and Technical Training in Islamabad today, said that no country can progress unless it focuses on provision of quality education to its youth.

He said that the Islamabad Capital Territory would serve as a model for other provinces to raise their standards of education.

The prime minister also called for setting up a National Testing Service so as to standardise the level of education being imparted by different educational boards across the country.

He said at present it was difficult to judge different standards being followed by the provinces and hoped the next government would take up this challenge.

PM Abbasi earlier launched the new curriculum and textbooks for federal schools. In phase-1, books for classes 1-5 have been upgraded. Phase-2 will see the upgrading of books for classes 6-8, while the programme's final phase is to improve the content for classes 9-12.

The outgoing PM said that after the 18th Constitutional Amendment, education was now a provincial subject. He said the provinces have huge budgets and equally large responsibilities but lack the capacity, which "needs to be built".

Abbasi was appreciative of the ministry for its initiative and said there was also a need to improve the training of teachers to ensure that education being imparted is of the highest quality.

The PM said that the government spends Rs5,000 on each student in the government schools but regretted that the results were still not satisfactory.

On the contrary, he said, private sector schools were getting better results by spending far less money.