LAHORE, Sept 9: Governor Khalid Maqbool has urged the public sector education institutions to improve the quality of education.

The governor said this while speaking at the Islamia College, Railway Road, and the Islamia College, Civil Lines. Punjab Education Minister Akhtar Saeed was also present on the occasion.

Stressing the need for market-oriented and industry-linked education, the governor urged both the institutions to link their curriculum with practical needs of the local industry. He regretted that education in public sector institutions had suffered primarily because it lost touch with the needs of the industry and society at large. He said students of a college like the Islamia College, Railway Road, which once had teachers like Dr. Allama Iqbal and Hafiz Mahmood Shirazi could not compete in the market because they were not equipped with competitive and qualitative education.

He said with its constrained resources, no government alone could bear the gigantic task of providing the most updated and qualitative education at all levels. In this regard, he stressed for a public-private partnership in which optimum autonomy was granted to the institutions so that they could generate resources and come up with strategies to boost up the quality of education.

The governor said ‘self-finance’ was one practical way to generate resources for the institutions, but added that he had directed all autonomous colleges to give 20 per cent seats on scholarship basis so that the most deserving candidates were not deprived of education.

Responding to queries for subsidized education, the governor said even in a rich country like the USA only first 12 years of education were free for all, but after that the professional education was neither free nor cheap.

He urged the students to take lead from the vision of great educationist Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who believed that the Muslims should acquire modern education to make a difference. He said politics should not be the priority of students, rather an urge for high quality education should be their prime aim.

The governor directed this institution to hold a seminar on ‘How to improve public sector education’ which he desired to attend as well.

With an aim to support the deserving but talented students, an endowment fund worth Rs85 million was being created from which 1,000 full-fledged scholarships would be awarded in the first year of worth Rs25,000 each, he said. The scheme would be launched within 10 days formally. A budgetary allocation of Rs2 billion had to be added for the salaries of 30,000 teachers being recruited by the government, he said.

“How can the government direct all its budget to a couple of institutions and forget its other compulsive obligations,” said the governor while talking to students.

He cited that out of a budget of Rs130 billion of the Punjab government, Rs35 billion were being spent on education while Rs20 billion went to debt servicing and Rs10 billion to health facilities.

From this year a new 100 seats self-financing medical college would be established at the Services Hospital in which 50 seats would be funded by the Malaysian government, he said.—APP