PESHAWAR, July 2: The NWFP education minister, Maulana Fazli-i-Ali Haqqani, has said that no educational institution of the province will get affiliation with the Aga Khan Education Board. He said that instead of affiliation with the AKEB, the existing education boards should be strengthened by incorporating in them the positive points of other boards, including the AKEB. Students and parents would have more trust in the existing education boards than the AKEB.

Speaking at the “Guest Hour” programme of the Peshawar Press Club here on Saturday, he said a cabinet meeting recently decided to take powers relating to many educational institutions, including the education boards, from the NWFP governor and transfer them to the chief minister.

He said that in other three provinces, the chief ministers exercised powers over education boards and institutions like NWFP’s Education Testing and Evaluation Authority, Higher Education Regulatory Authority and the Textbook Board.

“Education is a provincial subject and institutions and matters relating to education should come under the control of the provincial government,” Mr Haqqani said.

A search committee comprising academics and qualified persons from civil society would be set up soon to choose the chairman of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE).

Brig Manzoor Iqbal, the ex-chairman, had been removed from his service after paper leakage charges in the FA/FSc examination of May.

Talking about the Madressah reforms, the education minister said that the federal government should seek advice from provincial governments and take them into confidence instead of dictating things to them.

He said that the provincial government was open to any reforms in Madaris but it should be trusted and consulted on the issue.

Mr Haqqani said that the government was following a policy of merit in the appointment of teachers and putting stress on teacher training. It had distributed books free of cost to increase enrolment in schools.

He said that due to lack of space in the Peshawar district an Education City (complex) on the main G.T. Road had been planned where about 25,000 children would receive education free of charge. The complex will be constructed in many phases, the first one alone costing Rs2 million.

The provincial government has also relaxed qualification rules for the appointment of female teachers.

He acknowledged that there was a need to improve the standard of education in the province. At present, 121 projects in the education sector were continuing while 25 new ones had been launched.

The monitoring system had been made effective and a sum of Rs30 million allocated for collecting data on children who were not going to school, he said. Free of cost books were distributed to encourage enrolment in schools and decrease the dropout rate.

The minister claimed that about 500,000 children were enrolled in schools but this also created a problem of space.

He said that some 720 ghost schools had been discovered in the province. About 80 schools had been made functional and the rest will also be reopened to solve the problem of space shortage.

Mr Haqqani told a questioner that students should be organized. Their unions were an effective way of inculcating unity among them. He, however, added that political parties’ student wings active in colleges and universities were unconstitutional.

“The students and teachers should abstain from politics as this obstructed the teaching environment at campuses,” Maulana Haqqani said.