Dr Ishrat Hussain, Dean and Director IBA, on Sunday said that spending in education was not an issue; rather it was prevention of misallocation of resources in the country which required a solution.
He was speaking at the dialogue, at a local hotel, arranged due to complexity of issue and diverse opinions on the subject of devolution under the 18th amendment and more specifically relating to education under Article 25-A.
The Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) in collaboration with the Agha Khan University’s Institute for Education Development (AKU-IED) conducted a Policy Dialogue on the subject of the 18th Amendment to encourage open communication and constructive debate among stakeholders so that practical and viable solutions might be ensured.
Over 120 people including major stakeholders belonging to the field of academics, practitioners working in the field of education and representatives from the government attended the event
Education experts and policy makers gathered together and discussed measures conducive for a meaningful transition of power from the federal to the provincial government through the 18th amendment.
Javed Hasan Ali, former Secretary Establishment Division, stated that there were no standards or benchmarks of education regarding the quality of education and that the curriculum had also been used more for ideological indoctrination than true learning.
Dr Kaiser Bengali of KU said that the Sindh education sector was a complete disaster. He stated that first of all we needed to work on the housing for schools and not the one-room facilities.
Parvez Sehar, Chief Program Manager Reform Support Unit, said that we faced challenges in the access, quality and governance of education.
He added that the government was working on the policy of school consolidation which would work towards the improvement of governance.
Prof Anita Ghulam Ali, MD Sindh Education Foundation, stated that the people competent to deal with the issues should be appointed at relevant positions especially at the upper echelons of education.
She said that the government principals should be given more authority in line with that of private schooling on the hiring and firing of teachers, autonomy on financial matters and then be made responsible for the performance of the schools which in the end wiould improve the quality of schooling.
HEC Chairperson Dr Javed Leghari explained that at the Higher Education Commission it was about the people and not the brick and mortar and that investing in teachers was most important in education. He added that HEC had produced more PHDs in the last five years than in the last 55 years.
