LAHORE, June 4: Great progress has been made in preparing the national curriculum for literacy in the light of guidelines on youth and adult literacy.
Arif Majeed, Joint Adviser, curriculum wing of education ministry said this at a two-day workshop on national curriculum and learning material which concluded here on Tuesday.
The workshop was held by the Pakistan Association for Continuous Adult Education (PACADE) in collaboration with Unesco and was attended by curriculum experts and senior officials of the education departments of all the four provinces. PACADE President Inayatullah presided over the meeting.
Mr Majeed said the government recommended the preparation of the curriculum in the light of its policy document titled “Guidelines for strategic framework of action for UN Literacy Decade (2003-2012).” The guidelines were extensively shared with the provincial education departments, educational experts, NGOs, and other stakeholders.
He said there had been a serious problem of retaining the learners at literacy centres for completion of literacy programmes. In this connection, he said, the government decided to add more components relating to learners’ needs and interests, like functional literacy and income generating skills, to the national curriculum.
He said in basic literacy component, three new levels had been introduced which included the reading, writing and numerical skills.
The participants emphasised the need for making the use of curriculum content flexible to meet the changing needs of the learners. They also made various suggestions for preparing suitable learning materials.
Mr Inayatulah while addressing the workshop participants highlighted the importance of literacy expansion programmes in Pakistan which, he said, had a very poor rate of literacy even among Asian countries.
He said the government had been making half-hearted attempts to promote literacy and in the absence of any political will, the programme could not make any headway.
He said PACADE had been promoting literacy and other education programmes for the last 24 years. It had held a number of conferences, seminars and workshops on adult and continuing education in Pakistan.