ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi on Wednesday emphasised the need for universities to improve their syllabuses and bring it into consonance with social and psychological needs of the students.

“Education must be pleasure and should not keep students under a perpetual stress of achievement,” the president said while speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the international conference on ‘Quality Assurance System, Standards and Policies: Issues and Challenges’.

The conference is being organised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in collaboration with the United States Education Foundation Programme (USEFP).

The conference aims to improve the quality of higher education and advance mutual understanding of international quality assurance standards by bringing together academic experts from around the world.

The president said universities must focus on enhancing the quality of education and research in addition to increasing enrolments and publications.

Education minister says new education policy will be finalised soon

He said as the economy improved, funding situation for higher education would also improve.

He said past years had witnessed a remarkable infrastructural development in the education sector, but the majority of parents want improvement in quality of education for their children.Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood said the government intends to enhance funding for higher education for recurring as well as the development budget.

He lamented that Pakistan was declining in the Learning Poverty Index, adding that quality had become a challenge with the expansion of access to education.

Mr Mahmood said 50,000 undergraduate scholarships per year had been announced under the Prime Minister Ehsas Undergraduate Scholarship Programme, which was a big initiative. He also acknowledged the contribution of the US government in promoting higher education in the country.

HEC Chairman Tariq Banuri said the conference themes correspond with the commission’s reform agenda. He added that the goal of the conference was to start a national conversation on quality.

US Ambassador Paul Jones said the United States was proud of its educational linkages with Pakistan. He said the US had recently entered into 23 partnerships with Pakistani institutions, adding that 100 Pakistanis were sent to the US under the US-Pakistan Academic and Cultural Exchange Programme.

The US envoy further said his country had so far awarded 19,000 need-based scholarships to Pakistani students.

National Conference on Education

Speaking at another event, Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood said new education policy was being prepared which would be finalised soon.

Speaking at the national conference on education organised by the Institute of Social and Policy Sciences, the education minister said for bringing uniformity in the education sector, which is currently divided into three streams, a national curriculum was being developed which would be taught in all system of educations, including madressahs. He said there was also a need for authentic education data as available data was not much reliable.

Punjab Education Minister Murad Raas emphasised the need to create a consensus on a unified educational framework between the federal and provincial governments.

He also called for robust examination system to improve the educational system, in addition to setting the curriculum in line with international standards.

He said by 2020, the Punjab education department will be fully digitised in making decisions related to education.

To a query of one of the participants, the provincial education minister said Pakistan’s education sector should not be compared with developed countries, rather “our comparison should be made with Somalia and Nigeria”, he said, referring to the state of education in the country. However, he said his party’s government had been making efforts to bring improvement.

Earlier, National Assembly Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri, while discussing the poor education indicators and magnitude of the challenge, stressed the need for a well-coordinated response to the challenge.

He stressed on the federal government to act as a coordinator for charting out a course for addressing the education needs.

Chairman Standing Committee on Law and Convener Parliamentary Task Force on SDGs Riaz Fatyana said Pakistan was lagging behind the SDG-4 targets and stressed the need for combined effort to achieve them.

He said efforts of the current government, particularly for education reforms, were praiseworthy and would soon show a mark improvement in the education indicators.

Parliamentary Secretary for Planning Development, Reforms and Special Initiatives Kanwal Shauzab outlined the government efforts for achieving SDG-4 targets.

She said the present government had introduced exceptional reforms in the education sector, which would lead to substantial improvement in the education sector.

A numbers of education experts and public representatives from all provinces spoke and called for generating a national response to end education emergency in the country.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2019