ISLAMABAD: Minister for Interior and Planning, Development and Reforms Ahsan Iqbal said Thursday that the government has released funds for initiating reforms in the education sector by improving the curriculum per modern standards and integrating the religious seminaries into the mainstream education system of the country.
Addressing the concluding ceremony of the 5th National Stakeholders Conference on “Dissemination of National Education Assessment System (NEAS) Findings 2016-17”, he said that the assessment of the educational system in the country was of prime importance.
The conference was attended by the Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Engineer Baligh-ur-Rahman, Allama Iqbal Open University vice chancellor and Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Hyderabad chairman.
The interior minister said that the previous governments had failed to carry out an assessment of the education system, due to which the system had remained faulty. While congratulating the Ministry of Education, NEAS and other departments concerned for holding a successful educational assessment, the minister said that the present government had laid the foundation of the knowledge economy in the country.
“We belong to a generation of people who have seen the education system change from the chalk and board system of teaching to learning with the help of 4G technology, adding that, “The coming generations would use more advanced technology for educational purposes.”
The most integral part of literacy nowadays was directly linked to computer literacy which had the potential to transform the entire system through technological intervention, he said. The major issue with the Muslim Ummah, the minister said, was that they were not paying any attention to scientific inquiry and innovation.
Iqbal further said that under Vision 2025, the Planning Commission had released funds for four major programmes of the Ministry of Education and Professional Training. The first programme was the development of the curriculum under which the education ministry had prepared a modern curriculum for schools in the federal capital, he added.
The second programme was the comparative study and reforms of the Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education in the country, under which the educational standard of all the boards across the country would be assessed and modernised with new technological facilities, he said. The Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (FBISE) have successfully carried out reforms and adopted modern technology, while the other educational boards of the country need to carry out the desired reforms at the earliest, he added.
After assessment of the education boards, it was observed that the standard of education across all provinces was different, thus proving to be a major problem for the education system in general, the minister said.
In this regard, Federal Education Minister Baligh-ur-Rahman successfully brought the federal and provincial education systems on one platform to ensure that the same standard of education was provided to children in all corners of the country, he informed.
Moreover, Iqbal said that the constitution of a “National Task Force” comprising of gifted educationists was the need of the hour as it would help identify the issues in the education sector and resolve them accordingly.
He said this task force would take the necessary steps to raise the standard of education in the country and bring it at par with the international level. The Ministry of Federal Education would soon notify this task force so that it could continue its work during the tenure of the next government, he said.
The interior minister also said that the third programme would revolve around the training of teachers to make them aware of the modern curriculum to help them promote interactive learning among students.