KARACHI, Jan 12: In a detailed meeting on Saturday, the stakeholders of the provincial education department discussed the decision of the department’s steering committee about the start of the new academic year four months in advance of the schedule and decided to stick to the powerful committee’s decision, insiders in the department told Dawn.

The consultative meeting, which continued for a couple of hours in the committee room of the education department on Saturday, consisted of representatives from private schools, missionary schools, the board of intermediate education Karachi, non-governmental organisations dealing with educational matters, educationists and senior government officials, with caretaker Education Minister Shujaat Ali Baig in the chair.

The education department withheld notification of the rescheduling of the new academic session and decided to issue it after a consensus decision in the meeting.

The sources said all the stakeholders discussed the confusion created about the rescheduling of the new academic year on April 1 from this year threadbare until they reached a consensus decision to start the new academic year four months in advance from this year as per the steering committee’s decision.

The main hurdle, which is being conceived as the only obstacle in the rescheduling of the new academic year, was the provision of schoolbooks on time. The meeting realized that textbooks could not be provided by April 1 due to limited time and because of general elections next month. However, it was decided to provide used books to the students until new ones were published and duly provided to them.

“The education department is responsible for providing textbooks to the students as soon as possible and if the books’ printing gets delayed by a fortnight or a month, till then the students would be provided with used books to prevent any possibility of their academic loss,” a source quoted the decision as taken by the participants of the meeting.

Trial and error

Earlier, sources said the meeting was informed about the background of the past changes in the academic year. The schedule was first changed to August in 1992 due to the pressure of the World Bank, but a couple of years later it was again rescheduled for April 1 given the hardships the new schedule had caused, specially to the students of areas with sizzling summers. The steering committee again revised the academic year to August in Jan, 2006, but realizing its fault, it yet again revised it this year.

“The academic year should start in April because it suits our demographic conditions,” asserted a participant of the meeting.

Sources said after a consensus decision, a formal notification for rescheduling of the new academic year would be issued in a couple of days.

The steering committee, while deciding about advancing the new academic year, had said the decision was taken in the larger interest of the students, teachers and parents. It also decided that the summer vacations would be reduced to two months as had been the case two years ago, before a previous steering committee’s decision stretched them to two-and-a-half months.

The education department had decided to review its decision about the new academic year after it received reservations from many stakeholders, including the publishers of textbooks, parents, students and most of the private schools.

Sources said the authorities had already cancelled their tender for the procurement of paper for publishing of textbooks while printing of schoolbooks could not be possible owing to the fact that the bank accounts of the Sindh Textbook Board (STB) had been seized while the authorities are yet to reach an agreement with the publishers.

The STB’s accounts were seized after the board’s building was ransacked by miscreants during the week-long violence which started soon after the assassination of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

Sources said the publishers needed at least three months to publish textbooks for the next academic year, which was not possible if the session starts on April 1 given the fact that February would be the month of elections, while cumbersome formalities were bound to take ample time to be completed.

Mr Baig said he had asked the STB officials to submit a report about the actual state of affairs regarding its preparedness for the new academic session.