LAHORE, March 27: Nasim Ashraf, chairman of the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD), says Pakistan will surpass its target of achieving 70 per cent literacy by the year 2015.
The NCHD chairman said this while speaking at a gathering of civil servants and educationalists at a seminar entitled ‘Effective practices in literacy approaches’ here on Thursday.
Mr Ashraf said: “We are now at the stage where we can open 100,000 literacy centres every year. Having this trend continued for the next five years will ensure we meet and surpass our goals,” before explaining that, according to calculations done by the NCHD, over 86 per cent of the country will be literate by the year 2015.
He said another crucial factor in meeting this goal was the target enrollment of 93 per cent of all five-seven year olds in primary schools, as part of the Universal Primary Education Programme.
“If we keep them in schools till at least age 10, then each year we will have 5 million more individuals who will be counted in the “literate” pool as opposed to the “illiterate” pool”, he said.
Talking later to reporters, Mr Ashraf admitted that current spending on education as a percentage of GDP, currently 2.6 per cent, was too low and that major improvements could only take place when this was increased to four per cent in line with Unesco regulations.
In what he termed “a challenge I would like to give to educationalists,” Mr Ashraf said that the main purpose of the NCHD’s adult literacy programmes were not to convert people who had been illiterate all their lives into proficient writers or PhD candidates.
“For me it doesn’t matter if they can write seven sentences in their mother tongue or not,” he said. Rather, parents of children should be proficient in reading a local newspaper in their own language.
The main objective, he said, was to change mindsets so that parents would instill the desire for learning in their own children who could then go on to complete their high school and even college education.
He said although NCHD had been designated the lead agency in delivering literacy, all agencies should work together for the best results. Earlier, Ichiro Miyzwa of Unesco Pakistan, had announced a new pilot scheme in which illiterate adults would be given new cell phones to supplement their learning. He said: “Eighty million Pakistanis have cell phones. They are becoming cheaper and illiterate people have exposure to more and more information. If we can utilise it correctly, it’s possible to reduce illiteracy dramatically.” —Staff Reporter