ISLAMABAD: National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) has set up the first-ever National Training Institute (NTI) to train the master trainers for non-formal education to achieve 90 percent literacy rate across the country.
NCHD Chairperson Razina Alam Khan said that the NTI has been widely appreciated by educationists, intelligentsia and politicians. She said that an institution should be developed to provide training in the field of multi-grade teaching and a team of experts should be raised to train the master trainers in this field.
She said that the low literacy rate and 57 million illiterates also demanded a focused approach to create such facility. Razina Alam said that the NTI was established with an aim to fulfill training needs of the professionals working in the field of non-formal education.
She said that the existing formal system was adding about one percent literacy rate annually and through the existing pace Pakistan could only achieve 68 percent literacy rate by 2025. She said that there were still 57 million adults illiterate and 6.4 million children in the age group of 8 to14 years, who could not be addressed through formal education system.
Without non-formal education, “we could not become a part of literate society,” she said, adding that the NTI was devising a national plan of action under the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training in collaboration with all the stakeholders to achieve educational target of Vision 2025.
She said that the NTI would serve as a laboratory for the stakeholders working in the field of literacy and non-formal education. It would develop manual and modules and conduct trainings to build capacities of literacy and non-formal education personnel, prepare learning resource packs for learners and conduct research studies to be utilised for highlighting grey areas and improving non-formal education system.
She said that the NTI would also devise national plan of action for policymakers which would serve as a roadmap to achieve SDG-4. To a question, she said that in under-developing countries it was required to place a system of education that could be success even with minimum budget.
She said that a multi-grade teaching technique was one such strategy adopted by most of the under-developing countries to cut the cost being invested in hiring teachers for individual grades. She said that the NTI had introduced this technique in 5,949 feeder schools and results were fruitful.
The NTI had trained master trainers and had developed a training manual for multi-grade teaching techniques which could be utilised by all the stakeholders working in non-formal education. It is pertinent to mention here that Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Muhammad Balighur Rehman inaugurated the first National Training Institute in Islamabad on May 15, and said that the government had taken a number of supportive steps to improve education in the country.
