State Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Balighur Rehman said the country could be put on the road to progress, prosperity and development by investing and focusing in quality education.
Addressing the participants of the third Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference (IPEMC), the minister said, “No country in the world can make progress without investing in education sector as all the developed country had invested in the education and health sectors to make way on the road to progress and development.”
The minister said fruits and experiences of two earlier conferences had benefited in formulating the future polices. He said, “IPEMC is an integral requisite institution under National Education Policy, 2009 and provides us a platform for consultative meetings to promote affordable quality education in Pakistan.”
He said that National Education Policy 2009 is also consensus document. He said it is also a forum where much could be learned from each other’s experiences and best global practices in the field of education and management could be discussed.
The minister said IPEMC provided a platform to interact with donors and UN agencies for formulating a unison policy for investing in education sector. He said the synergy among education development partners helped them to avoid duplication of work and ensure value of money.
Mainly, the conference discussed National Curriculum Council and National Education Policy and a model of non-salary budget by government of Punjab. He said a delegation of Ministry of Education recently visited Germany to examine KMK, as this forum has contributed very much to increase literacy rate in the Germany.
Balighur Rehman said, “We have requested government of Germany through GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbel) to share with us the best practices from KMK.”
The KMK is similar body like IPEMC and there are many things to learn since there are 16 states in Germany and they have been successful to ensure minimum quality standards across the states although Education is fairly decentralized but they have ensured minimum quality in terms of achievement of our students in Pakistan.