LAHORE, July 22: An ‘unimpressive’ presentation by the director of the Directorate of Staff Development on the proposed project of the University of Education Punjab (UEP) made Governor Khalid Maqbool on Monday to defer its inauguration for one more week.

The governor gave the DSD director a week’s time to work out all modalities of the project before going ahead with its inauguration.

Director Dr Mustafa Habibullah’s presentation lacked basic information, according to a majority of the participants (of the meeting) invited from different educational institutions.

Prof Munawar Mirza, the director of the Institute of Education and Research, Punjab University, and Prof Muhammad Aslam of the Educators said the basic concept of the project was not clear and suggested that proper homework should be done to drive out the ambiguities.

Education minister Akhtar Saeed invited participants’ suggestions and proposals on the project on Wednesday.

In his presentation, Dr Mustafa said an education university was the need of the hour to groom the teachers. Only a trained teacher could educate his students according to the norms of modern education, he said.

Dr Mustfa informed the meeting that the university would offer various education disciplines, including research and PhD programmes. The university would be connected with international and national education institutes, he added. He said that local colleges would be strengthened after getting affiliated with the university.

The participants also stressed the need to train the teachers in terms of methodology, suggesting that curriculum should conform with methodology. They said that no attention had been paid to teacher’s training in the past and only good teachers could bring about a change in the fate of a nation, they said.

According to them, a handsome amount was spent on the science and technology sector in the last couple of years while the education sector failed to catch the government attention. They urged the governor to finance such projects.

Talking to reporters later, the governor said the denationalization of educational institutions would neither pose any threat to teachers’ jobs nor increase the cost of education for students. He said the campaign against the denationalization was baseless as nothing was being done against the interest of teachers and students. He said autonomous institutions had been directed to give 20 per cent concession to deserving students.

He said the government would allocate an amount of Rs1 billion for scholarships to graduate, post-graduate and PhD students. He said the government was now focusing on higher education and would finance projects of higher education in private sector.

To a question, he said Nazimeen could not use their offices as a platform for political campaign of any party. “If any Nazim or minister wants to take part in the elections he would have to quit his office first”. he added.