LAHORE, Aug 30: The government has decided to conduct an academic audit of all public and private educational institutions for their categorization in different grades according to quality of their education and facilities made available to students.

This was stated by Governor Khalid Maqbool at the inauguration of the School of Mathematical Sciences here on Friday. The school is attached to the Government College, Lahore, and is located in Muslim Town.

“The grading of the institutions will enable people to have an idea of their academic quality and standards,” the governor said. He stressed the need for research and innovation to “help society grow, develop and sustain”. He said the government was “investing in higher education to produce quality researchers and manpower”.

He said billions of rupees had been spent on the development of universities, colleges, schools and laboratories for promoting education. “A few reputed educational institutions have also come up in the private sector to share the responsibility of offering quality education.” Moreover, Islamic education institutions were being opened, including one at the Data Ganj Bakhsh Complex, he said.

He said the government was also introducing board of governors at the public sector educational institutions to develop self-accountability.

He said the government had also decided to allow civil servants doing their PhDs full salary during the studies against the previous tradition of allowing 75 per cent of the salary. A Rs1 billion endowment fund had also been set up to give scholarships to needy students studying medicine, engineering, computer science, nursing and post-graduation courses, he said.

The governor said there was a burden on the government as it was offering higher education at very nominal fees. It was a hard reality that the government had no money to establish more quality institutions and hire the services of qualified teachers to offer quality education.

He, however, said the deserving students would definitely be funded by the government. “The poor students must be funded by the government and society otherwise there will be a great brain drain,” he said.

He said the public sector educational institutions showing bad results would be improved. The government would also provide funds to conduct research in higher education institutions. He also agreed to ask the Punjab IT Department to hold software development competitions and offer commissioned research projects in higher education institutions.

Earlier, education minister Akhtar Said said mathematics was a language of all sciences. Science helped develop technologies leading to progress and development. He said higher education in mathematics had divided nations in the developed and under-developed countries. He was hopeful that the SMS would become an international seat of learning.

GC principal Dr Khalid Aftab said the college had been offering quality education based on research from its very inception. He said modern scientific subjects had also been introduced at the college to meet the modern day requirements.

He said the idea of SMS was floated at a vice-chancellor’s meeting and was entrusted to the GC for materializing it.

SMS director-general Prof Dr Taqdeer Husain said mathematics played a fundamental role in all sciences, including social sciences. He was sorry to note that there were not more than 10 PhDs in mathematics out of 400 PhDs. He said he himself alone had produced 70 PhDs while teaching at a foreign university.

Prof Husain said a number of MPhil students from different universities had expressed their desire to join the school to do their PhDs. He said senior mathematicians serving abroad were being contacted to join the school as faculty members. He said 10 PhD students and six researchers would be admitted during the first year.

He said the school would hold seminars on a regular basis besides holding an international conference during the year.