LAHORE, Sept 26: Punjab Education Minister Imran Masood has said his department has no legal authority to check and monitor the private sector educational institutions.
Talking to reporters after the inaugural session of a two-day science conference at the Kinnaird College on Friday, the minister said the Punjab government was considering to make a legislation in this regard.
He said the Punjab University’s Institute of Education and Research as well as the private sector were conducting a research about private sector educational institutions. At present, he said, the Education Department had information only about the registered institutions. The unregistered institutions on the other hand had no responsibility to any loss or damage to their clients.
He said the government wanted to regulate the private sector institutions, and it would support only good institutions and eliminate the ‘bad’ ones.
The minister said an accreditation committee had also been given a task to monitor the education standard of all private institutions charging high fees. It would also monitor the government’s chartered institutions.
He said the institutions claiming affiliations with foreign universities were bound to observe Punjab government’s rules and regulations. The Education Department was framing rules and regulations for the private institutions having affiliations with foreign institutions. “Only those institutions will be allowed to function which will qualify the government’s rules,” he said.
Answering a question that provincial finance minister Sardar Hasnain Dareshak had recently presided over a convocation of an institution declared illegal by the Punjab University, he said he would issue an order that no provincial minister or any other government dignitary should attend any function of ‘illegal campuses’ in their official capacities from now onwards.
PROFILE: The minister said the Education Department was also preparing to publish a profile of all public sector colleges regarding their performance in board and university examinations as well as their teachers and students’ strength, costs incurred and infrastructure to identify institutions not performing accordingly.
He admitted that the government was spending billions of rupees, but the institutions were not giving the desired results. He said a similar exercise would also be conducted for registered private sector colleges in the next phase.
Regarding a time frame for the development of profiles, he said it would take time because there was a big network of public sector colleges.
NO-FAIL-NO-PASS SYSTEM: The minister said the government had revised the no-fail-no-pass system from class-I to X, and decided to do away with the system from class-IV onwards from the next academic session.
He said the no-fail-no-pass system would continue only from class-I to III. The students who appeared for class-IX examination under this system would appear for the class-X examination under the same system.
Mr Masood said the government had also decided that the fail-pass system from class-IV to X would be operated in conjunction with the continuous assessment system.