KARACHI, Jan 2: A high level meeting, chaired by federal education minister Zubeida Jalal, reviewed the draft of an early childhood education curriculum here recently.

The curriculum has been prepared by an NGO — Teachers’ Resource Centre.

It recognizes a system of study for children of three to five years. The framework of the curriculum is a combination of expertise at the practitioners’ level — teachers, the heads and supervisors — and international input from early childhood educators, specially at the regional level, said a press release of the resource centre.

The minister observed that every one realized the children’s needs in their infancy, which were important and could provide a sound basis for preparing them to join a formal school system.

While mentioning that there was no recognized system of studies, the minister said the government realized the genuine needs of “all ages” education and was making efforts in this regard with the cooperation of the private sector.

Among others, the senior officials and advisers of the federal education ministry as well as members from different curriculum bureaus of the provinces attended the meeting.

The minister expressed satisfaction over the proceeding of the meeting and said the government was determined to promote public-private partnership and the reforms in the education sector were important steps in this regard.

Ms Jalal said once the related curricula drafted by the TRC was finalized, it would become a formal part of the scheme of studies and the curriculum would be forwarded to all the provincial governments for implementation.

The TRC director, Seema Malik, said the role of NGOs was to create workable models but it was for the government to take them to scale. Referring to different models developed by the centre, she said the early childhood education curriculum had been successfully implemented in 40 government and DMC schools in Karachi, while it was currently being piloted at Shikarpur.