LAHORE, Sept 10: School, college and university teachers will launch a 10-day campaign from Monday to expose ‘real objectives’ of reforms being introduced in the curricula and for the acceptance of their demands.

The decision to launch the countrywide drive was announced by Punjab president Prof Rana Asghar Ali of the Tanzeem-i-Asataza Pakistan at a news conference at the Lahore Press Club on Sunday. Some 11 officials of different school, college and university teachers’ associations were also present.

Mr Rana said the Punjab education minister told him during a meeting that the pictures and messages of Gen Pervez Musharraf and Pervaiz Elahi had been included in the textbooks as the two were spending money for the provision of free books.

“In fact, the US had given $4.5 million to the Aga Khan Foundation, and the same amount was paid to the Punjab government for promoting secularism in the country,” he said.

He said the federal health minister told him that `tareeqa-i-namaz’ had been excluded from the textbooks for Northern Areas because it was promoting sectarianism, and a sect had raised objections to it.

“The sect that had been accused of raising objection never offer `namaz’,” he said, and added the objective was to promote the so-called enlightened moderation.

Calling for introduction of the similar education system, syllabus and the medium of instruction throughout the country, he said at least five per cent of the annual GDP should be allocated for the provision of appropriate facilities like libraries, laboratories, computers and classrooms in educational institutions.

The curricula, he said, should be framed according to the ideology of Islam and Pakistan. The efforts to enforce secular curricula at the behest of American think tanks should be stopped.

The Aga Khan Education Board Ordinance should be repealed, as it would further widen the gap between the existing educational system based on the socio-economic class system.

“Some 64 per cent funds are being spent on the four per cent children of the elite class who leave country after doing their O or A-Levels. The children hailing from the rest of the population — 96 per cent — who live in Pakistan get a share of 36 per cent of the total resources,” he said.

The government had been spending 1.8 per cent of the ADP on education, but 50,000 or so children still had no access to schools, he said.

Teachers should be recruited on a regular basis instead of the contract system. The services of all teachers, recruited on contract, should be regularised, he said.

He said teachers had been serving the federal and provincial departments with the same zeal, and the discrepancies in their pay scales and wages should be done away with immediately. There should be a time-scale four-tier promotion formula for PTC, AT, OT, EST and other cadre teachers. The school and college teachers should also be paid a Rs5,000 PhD allowance like their fellows in universities, he said.