LAHORE, May 31: Speakers at a meeting of the Hamdard Thinkers Forum urged the government to take necessary measures in its new educational policy to have a uniform system of education in the country.

The meeting held at the Hamdard Centre on Wednesday with Senator S. M. Zafar in the chair, adopted a resolution urging the government to abolish the prevalent “class system” in education. It said the beginning could be made by asking the educational institutes for the elite to allocate at least 15 per cent of their seats free of any charge for the talented students of the poor. It appreciated that Sindh had already taken the lead by allocating 15 per cent seats in elite schools for the poor and suggested that it should be increased to 20 per cent.

Another resolution said greater attention should be given to the promotion of technical and vocational education than general education to meet the growing requirements of the trained and skilled people for various vocations in the country.

Senator Zafar said the need of the hour was to enhance the budgetary allocation for education, as the present one was too low to meet the growing requirements of the country.

He said the present allocation was less than 1 per cent of the GDP which should be increased to 2 to 4 per cent of the GDP. It was encouraging to find that the government was giving priority to education and had increased its budget for it. Yet there was need for giving more attention as Pakistan was still the lowest in literacy rate among most of the South Asian countries and none of its universities were in the world’s top 200 universities.

He said the western countries had made great progress in education because of the participation of the private sector funded by various educational foundations and big philanthropic institutions. In Pakistan civil society would have to realise its responsibility.

Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority chairman Khalid Mahmood, who was the main speaker at the meeting, said education should be divided into two distinct divisions, general education in arts and science subjects only for talented students who could go for higher education at the master and doctoral levels, and technical and vocational education and training for the less talented students. The latter should not be forced to “waste their time” in studying general subjects in the hope of getting jobs whereas they could be more useful and get better income jobs by training themselves in various technical and vocational subjects.

He recalled that even the Quaid-i-Azam had emphasised the need for technical and vocational education and training while addressing the first educational conference held at Karachi soon after independence.

He said there were three educational dilemmas; lack of an environment of freedom of questioning and reasoning by the students in educational institutions like the freedom enjoyed by the students in the West, commercialisation in education giving rise to class system with expensive schools opened by the private sector for the elite and the rich and the ordinary inexpensive schools for the poor, mostly in the public sector; and lastly indoctrination of Islamic education in schools.

Educationist Dr Rafiq Ahmad urged the government to place proposals of its new educational policy before the parliament for a thorough debate on them and said it should not be merely a document of the thoughts of a few individuals. He recalled that the previous education policy that was drawn up by Mian Nawaz Sharif administration one year before its dismissal had been thoroughly debated by the parliament. No such thing was happening now and the draft policy was being kept secret from the educationists. “Even I was not informed though I was invited to the educational conference being held these days at Islamabad. Since I was kept in the dark, I refused to attend it.”

He said while technical and vocational education was necessary, the importance of general education could not be denied.

Punjab University Associate Professor in Urdu Dr Zahid Munir said unless education in national language was imparted, the nation could not make any progress.

He also called for a uniform system of education and abolition of class system in education.

Politician Qayyum Nizami deplored that the views of the educationists, politicians and stakeholders in education had never been sought by the governments while framing policies which should reflect the aspirations of the people.

All Pakistan Private Schools Association president Adeeb Javidani said nine policies of education dawn up by previous government could not be implemented due to political reasons while the new policy was being prepared at the behest of the US government without taking the people and the stakeholders in confidence.