ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal said on Friday that “ILM Pakistan Movement” had been launched with the objective to improve students’ academic achievements and attitudes towards civic responsibility, respect for diversity and tolerance.

The launching ceremony at which Mr Iqbal was chief guest was organised by the Higher Education Commission.

Congratulating the nation on Independence Day, he said freedom of knowledge and intellectual growth in a society ensured real independence.

He mentioned Science Talent Farming Scheme for students, endowment fund for 50,000 talented students and creation of knowledge corridor with partner countries as the government’s commitment towards prioritising education.

Khaleeq Kiani adds: As part of the ILM Pakistan Movement, the government will introduce an ‘Urdish’ medium of education — a blend of the English and Urdu languages.

It also plans to formulate a national standard curriculum for the country to improve the upward mobility of educated and skilled youths irrespective of their provincial background.

Talking to journalists on Thursday, Mr Iqbal said the government was introducing three major projects during the current fiscal year through public sector development programme.

These included curriculum reforms, examination reforms and teachers’ training programme.

He said the education sector reforms were part of the Vision 2025 approved on Aug 11, 2014 but the launch was delayed because of sit-ins in the federal capital last year.

Mr Iqbal said the ILM initiative would strive to improve education standards beyond existing concepts of “education for the sake of education”.

He added that the federal government was coordinating on inter-provincial issues because the 18th Amendment did not allow it to play a direct role in the provinces.

All four provinces, he said, were also advocating a nationwide system of standards and coordination. He added that the PML-N did not have a two-thirds majority in the parliament or a majority in the Senate to bring about changes in 18th Amendment.

According to Mr Iqbal, the government can only coordinate with the provinces and push the reform forward through political cooperation.

He said that all media houses were required to run public service messages for the promotion of education and highlight educational issues under the law but they were not doing so.

Under the new initiative, said Mr Iqbal, the government would get rid of the English medium-Urdu medium controversy which had damaged the education standards and adversely affected the growth of young minds in contrast to the world practice of educating children in their native languages.

He said the ‘Urdish’ medium of education would be introduced by adopting terminologies of science and technology instead of using their translations and blend them with common Urdu narratives to make it easier for students to learn.

This would be done through reforms in the curriculum in consultation with all the four provinces. Likewise, crash courses would be introduced through leading institutions to develop educational standards.

This would be done by extending a semester of specialised programmes in marketing, business administration and accounting through universities such as the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Institute of Business Administration and the University of Engineering and Technology.

For example, he said, people with masters degrees in English if given a course on marketing or those having an economics background being given a course in accounting could transform themselves into the best sales team and accountants respectively.

He said the nationalised standards had now become imperative to improve mobility of the people otherwise those educated in one province would not be able to avail job opportunities in other provinces or outside Pakistan.

Mr Iqbal added that the inter-board committee of all educational boards in the country would set standards so that an A-grader of one board of examination was equivalent to the same grade in any other board.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2015

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