PESHAWAR, Dec 1: Educationists on Wednesday urged the NWFP directorate of curriculum and the textbooks board to take practical measures to eliminate gender disparities at the primary, middle and secondary levels.

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of a three-day workshop organized by the NWFP Textbook Board in collaboration with Unesco, NWFP Education Minister Maulana Fazle Ali Haqqani said the education commission formed by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government had proposed in its report that women's rights should be made part of the curriculum for public schools.

Mr Haqqani said that instead of copying the west, educationists should make a strategy to remove gender disparity from the curriculum and develop a balanced curriculum and textbooks.

Unesco programme specialist Hassan Keynan told the session entitled 'Identifying and developing strategies for achieving gender balance in curriculum and textbooks for primary, middle and secondary levels' that many UN agencies were supporting the government in its efforts for developing a national and provincial plan of action to achieve 'Education For All' (EFA).

"We want to assist the NWFP particularly in girls' education because girls are marginalized," said Mr Keynan, adding that the distribution of free textbooks and compulsory primary education were steps that strengthened chances of Pakistan to achieve EFA by the year 2015.

Dr Munawar Mirza from the Institute of Education and Research, University of Punjab, said it was important to eliminate systematic gender disparities wherever they persisted, amongst girls and boys, throughout the education system. She stressed the need for sensitizing both male and female policymakers to gender concerns.