ISLAMABAD: The Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) will review the new education policy today and deliberate on a proposal to implement an education emergency to enrol out-of-school children across the country.

Sources said the meeting at the PM office will be jointly presided over by federal ministers for Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development and Federal Education and Professional Training.

“A high profile meeting is going to be held on Thursday (today) at the PM office to discuss proposals for a new education policy, besides discussing the issue of declaration of a national emergency to address the issue of 26.9 million out-of-school children,” a source in federal government told Dawn.

Sources said some important facts would be discussed in the SIFC meeting as Pakistan’s population is above 200 million and growing at a rate of 2.4 per cent.

Officials say new policy to focus on out-of-school kids, technology deficit; education emergency also on agenda

Out of the total, 40pc population is in the age bracket of 0-20 years, while the total enrolment is 40 million, they said, adding that more than 26 million kids are out of school.

As per sources, 49pc of the total population is female and more than 10 million girls are out of school whereas the survival rate to Grade-10 is only 29pc of the enrolled. The literacy rate of 62pc is not satisfactory either.

Education experts, who are involved in the drafting of the new education policy, told Dawn that the new policy would focus on education participation, out-of-school children, dropouts, excellence, quality and relevance, and technology deficit.

They also said that new policy should also cover efficient education financing, national standards and strengthening of federal and provincial coordination, skills gaps and employability, and higher education. Sources said that the SIFC in its previous meeting suggested some valuable priority areas to be covered in the new policy.

This includes enrolling out-of-school kids, mainstreaming technical education, a focus on creativity and concept-based learning, uniform education, retaining dropout and out-of-school children into technical streams, inclusive education with special needs and requirements of gifted children, auditing of performance of teachers and schools, and introducing national curriculum into seminaries.

Objectives of policy

As per the officials, the new national document will focus on power learning and skills through technology, prepare youth for national and international markets, connect schooling and skilling, equip students with a ‘futuristic mindset’ to tackle the problems of the future (climate change, food scarcity), and exams reforms.

The new policy will also focus on school structure, teachers’ career paths, certification, accountability, language, curriculum, assessment, and disaster risk reduction etc. A few weeks ago, the education ministry started working on a new education policy and a meeting of the working group was recently held.

It is relevant to note that Pakistan has no updated education policy rather a policy of 2009 is in place. In 2016 and 2018, drafts were prepared for a national education policy but they could not be materialised.

On the other hand, the 2009 education policy is outdated and also has some anomalies, among them being the budget, which was set at 7pc of the GDP, whereas the country spends less than 2pc of the GDP on education.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2024