KARACHI, Feb 13: The Sindh minister for education and literacy, Dr Hamida Khuhro, has approved the recommendations of a "vision workshop" for broad based educational reforms to raise the standard of education in the public sector for a literate Sindh by 2005.

These recommendations were forwarded by a "vision workshop" jointly organized by the education department and the Educational Sector Reforms Assistance (ESRA) held in Karachi, said a press release on Sunday.

The workshop was well attended by the high officials and experts of the education department including the minister herself, Secretary Education M Hashim Leghari, special secretary, all additional secretaries, officers of the planning and development wing of education, bureau of curriculum, other experts and officials from ESRA.

The chief technical officer of ESRA, Hank Healy, was the facilitator, who thoroughly discussed the problems, lapses, drawbacks, public attitude and the role being played by the government for improvements in public sector education.

Four groups were constituted in the workshop, which reviewed the situation and came forward with recommendations for broad based reforms in education to visualize the Sindh of 2025.

The education minister agreed to the recommendations with regard to appointment of teachers on merit, eradication of corruption, incentives for children and parents, monitoring system, training and professional development, powers to head teachers for addressing teacher absenteeism and other reforms with sustainability.

The vision workshop also recommended the revival of the Sindh Local Government Ordinance to remove contradictions between the provincial and district governments along with clarifying the undefined areas.

Dr Hamida said that she wanted all schools to be converted into community based ones in which parents would be motivated to run their affairs and even have powers for hiring and firing teachers. She further said that problems being faced by education in the public sector were born for lack of direction, absence of clarity and defined objectives.

She said that she had been in touch with all stakeholders and donors to turn around the situation, and tailor programmes, not only to produce graduates that would only lead to unemployment and youth frustration, but ones through which enlightened citizens could be produced and more opportunities of employment and income generation could be created to contribute towards the province's and country's economy.

The minister said the goal of a 100 per cent literate Sindh by 2025 could only be achieved through enhancement of the department's capacity for collecting, analyzing and disseminating data in a manner that would feed into the decision making of policy makers, implementers and community particularly.

She appreciated the ESRA chief's idea and his financial and technical support for setting up a Reforms Support Unit (RSU), and said the unit would help the education department to develop policy option tools, formulate a strategic plan giving direction to our initiatives, and set fundamental quality levels, aligning resources in a more efficient and transparent manner with improved monitoring and accountability.

Dr Hamida hoped the workshop's recommendations would prove to be meaningful for decision makers and stakeholders in future, further adding that visioning or brainstorming exercises would lead to the development of a widely owned vision of what education would look in Sindh in 2025. - PPI