LAHORE, Sept 8: Education Minister Mian Imran Masood informed the Punjab Assembly on Wednesday that the government had decided to gradually do away with entrance tests for admission to engineering and medical colleges.

Responding to a point of order raised by PPP's Rahat Afza, the minister said in the first phase marks for written test had been increased from 50 per cent to 75 per cent to minimize chances of favouritism.

In the second phase, the whole system would be changed after restoring credibility of examination institutions (education boards), the minister said, adding the decision had the backing of the chief minister.

Mrs Afza said the entrance test system was depriving eligible but poor students of admission to professional institutes. Deputy speaker Shaukat Mazari, who was in the chair, supported the views claiming that the system had been introduced to deprive students from the backward areas like Dera Ghazi Khan of admission to professional colleges.

He said it was introduced in 1998 when some people gave an impression to the then chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, that the Dera Ghazi Khan education board was lenient in awarding marks to students, enabling them to get admission to professional institutes of repute.

Mr Masood, who was the chairman of the task force on education at that time, did not deny the claim but added that there were also other considerations for adopting this system.

He said booty mafia, leakage of examination papers and corruption by vigilance staff had damaged the credibility of examinations conducted by education boards. This prompted the government to take some remedial measures. Most of these problems, he said, had now been checked.

Earlier, the assembly was informed in response to a written question by Ehsanullah Waqas that all the 25 publishers, de-registered by the textbook board chairman, had been restored.

Answering a supplementary question, the minister said the education department purchased Rs650 million 60-gram paper every year and provided it to publishers for printing of textbooks. The quality of paper in each consignment was got checked by a federal government's laboratory before printing.

He did not agree to the suggestion that the department should instead check quality after printing so that paper of inferior quality could not be used. He asked Ehsanullah Waqas, who had claimed that printed books carried 45-gram paper, to come up with some specific cases.

Answering another question, Mr Masood said the textbook board chairperson had retired citing her personal problems. Allegations of corruption against her had nothing to do with the decision, he added.

He did not agree that a house committee should be formed to look into the affairs of the education department and PPP's Rana Aftab, who had raised the issue, took this matter to the Public Accounts Committee of which he (the Rana) was a member.

About the dilapidated condition of the Christian Hall School, Rang Mahal, he said the government could not allocate funds for the institution because two groups in the Presbyterian church had claims over its ownership and had taken the matter to court.

Replying to another question, the minister assured the house that recommendations of MPAs would be accommodated in the education committees being formed in each district to look after various development projects.

He told a questioner that there were 55,000 vacancies of teachers in the province, but these could not filled for want of funds. Later opening the house for general debate on education, the minister said the Punjab had one of the biggest school systems in the world and was, thus, prone to various problems.

Out of total nine million students from class I to matriculation, around four million dropped out because of poverty, lack of awareness, long travelling (for getting education), and other reasons.

To eliminate poverty for this purpose, he said, the government had abolished Rs420 million tuition fee and was providing books free of cost to students of classes I to V. Each girl getting education in 15 backward districts was being given Rs200 each, he added.

To improve quality of education, graduates were being hired as primary teachers and academics' training programmes finalized. A huge amount had been earmarked for providing facilities to 40,000 schools and a special team, headed by the chief minister, had been formed to have a vigilant eye on proper use of funds. This was in addition to another monitoring system.

He said Rs90 billion were needed to provide missing facilities to all the schools. Rana Aftab urged that proper legislation should be done to regulate private schools. He suggested adoption of a unanimous resolution by the house for requesting the government to frame laws for private schools.

Parliamentary secretary Malik Muhammad Ahmad Khan endorsed his views and urged the chair to suspend rules for immediately bringing such a resolution. Dr Javed Siddiqui lamented that in the Rs8.23 billion annual development plan (ADP) for education, only a meagre sum of Rs350 million had been allocated for the southern Punjab. He proposed that new recruitment of teachers should be made from within respective tehsils.

The chair endorsed the proposal and asked the education minister to ensure that a notification to this effect was issued before Sept 13 when the new recruitments were to be made. He also sought inclusion of MPAs concerned in the process.

Agriculture Marketing Minister Rana Qasim Noon reminded Dr Javed that an institute of information technology had been set up in Multan, which would start functioning in the current month.

Livestock minister Haroon Sultan said the Nishtar Medical College was also being upgraded to university level. Sagheera Islam alleged that the Lahore district Nazim had handed over most of the municipal schools to his favourite NGO. She alleged that syllabus was being changed on the US dictation.

She said former federal education minister Zobaida Jalal used to accept US dictation, which was a shameful act. MMA's Tahira Munir and Zaibun Nisa said attempts were being made to exclude such things from the syllabus that were reflective of our civilization and ideology. They quoted specific examples in this respect.

A treasury member regretted that the government was now introducing two-class system in rural population by starting English language teaching in some primary schools and ignoring others.

Furqan Ali urged that number of colleges in the province should be increased from 372 to 1,000 within a couple of years and three universities at each divisional level be set up.

WATER SHORTAGE: Irrigation minister Amir Sultan Cheema told the house that water from dams for Kharif crops would be available up to Sept 20. After that only "run of the river" would be used for irrigating cotton crop while tubewells for watering paddy and other crops in sweet water areas. To check cost of tubewell watering, the government would provide subsidy in diesel and power tariff, he added.