- Razina Alam suggests detailed analysis of children in all provinces to ensure quality education to all
ISLAMABAD: National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) Chairperson Razina Alam Khan has said that the commission is working on priority basis to enroll out of school children besides working on skill development to empower the neglected sections of the society, especially women.
She expressed these views while briefing Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood here. Talking about NCHD, Razina said that the commission had been contributing significantly towards 22.8 million children and it annually conducts a massive enrollment campaign in 124 districts, visiting remote areas at door steps to access all the children.
“There are 5,949 feeder schools across the country including Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) where 335,164 children of age 5 to 16 are acquiring education in the remote areas,” she said. NCHD has also pioneered 100 madrassa schools in former FATA, ICT, AJK and GB, she added.
She believed that primary education was the most important step in a child’s educational career. “It is a crucial stage in child’s formative development and will shape the child into a learner, thinker and social being.” The organisation has constituted an Advisory Council on Literacy and Islamabad Forum on non-formal education, which brings all stakeholders on a single platform to work for this noble cause, she said.
Talking about adult literacy programme, she said that NCHD being a lead agency in the adult literacy had made 3.96 million people literate since inception and won International Reading Award 2006 from UNESCO on literacy. In NCHD’s previous literacy phase, the commission introduced Functional Literacy Programme with a purpose to make them literate along with useful citizens by delivering literacy and vocational and technical skills, she said.
Through this programme, 150,000 adults especially women have been benefited and local skills in the rural areas was imparted to them in short span of time, she said. A detailed analysis of the out-of-school children is important for complementing the on-going work in all provinces and areas to scale up evidence based education activities to ensure that all children have access to quality education, she said.
“Our focus is to make nation 90 per cent literate and achieve 100% enrolment by 2025,” she said. The National Training Institute (NTI) of NCHD is established to ensure quality education by conducting research studies, capacitating staff in literacy and non-formal education (NFE) and developing need-based teaching-learning resource packages for NFE and literacy programmes, she said.