It is an established fact that the knowledge gap between the developed and the developing countries is the main cause of the present economic gap between them, said Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar on Wednesday while addressing a special session on the promotion of higher education in Pakistan which was organised by British Council at the Governor House on Wednesday.
He said that there was a correlation between education and the economic development of a country and same had been highlighted in contemporary research between developing and developed countries.
He said the promotion of higher education was inevitable to get respected place in the community of nations and the government was making all-out efforts in this regard.
“Our future lies in education and technology, therefore, we need to focus on empowering and equipping our universities and research centres to make them stand on solid foundations of excellence,” he said.
He said that current policies of the government were designed to lay greater emphasis on upgrading the skills of a vast resource of human capital the country possesses.
“The use of technology and public-private partnership is being encouraged by the government on every scale and sector,” he said, adding that it was quite encouraging that in pursuit of accessible quality education at higher levels, our institutions were finding inspiration from the best practices all over the world.
This is where strategic partnerships with international key-players in education sector like British Council can be of immense value to us, he added.
He said that British Council Pakistan had over 27 university partnerships in the province under which universities had engaged in programmes on research, knowledge transfer and student faculty exchange with UK.
He emphasised the need for enhancing this existing cooperation at professional educational institution like BDS, MBDS, Engineering and PhD level.
Punjab Education Minister Rana Mashhood Ahmed highlighted the government’s initiative under the leadership of Shahbaz Sharif to promote quality education and research in Punjab.
British Council Chief Executive Ciaran Devane collaborate the initiative and performance of various programmes being run by the British Council in Pakistan.
The session was informed that the British Council Pakistan has so far trained 100,000 educators in Punjab and this figure will reach at 350,000 by the end of 2018.
