ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Education and Professional Training is set to start the registration of over 35,000 religious seminaries (madrassas) operating across the country from the next month.
The ministry was in constant contact with madrassas for finalizing the necessary arrangements in that regard, said Joint Education Adviser Rafiq Tahir on Wednesday.
While talking to media, Tahir said all seminaries were bound to register themselves with the education ministry as no seminary would be allowed to function without registration.
A four-page form, he said, has been prepared for the registration of seminaries. It could be downloaded from ministry’s website within the next few days. The forms should be submitted in regional offices along with the necessary documents, he said.
Directorate General of Religious Education has already been established in Islamabad, Tahir informed.
The Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training has established 12 registration centres for registering seminaries across the country. While regional directorates have also been established at Karachi, Sukkur, Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi, Quetta, Loralai, Peshawar, Kohat, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit.
All seminaries, Tahir said, were required to open their accounts in scheduled banks and make transactions through banks. Religious seminaries would be required to impart uniform syllabus provided by National Curriculum Council from class 1 to 5 students of their respective institutes.
Tahir warned that the seminary violating code of conduct would be closed. He said the government would deploy two to three teachers in each seminary for imparting English, Urdu, Mathematics and Science education, registered seminaries would be allowed to enroll foreign students.
He said the seminaries had, in principle, agreed with the federal government initiative for bringing their students in the mainstream in order to ensure a uniform education system in the country. The government had established National Curriculum Council (NCC) under which the new curriculum from class one to five was being prepared which would be introduced by March 2020.
In this regard, he said, all stakeholders including public and private sector schools, madrassas, concerned departments had been taken on board on the issue.
He said that after holding several meetings regarding religious seminaries with Wafaq-ul-Madaris, it had been decided that the students would appear in the middle, matric and intermediate examinations of all educational boards like the students of other schools. The passed students would be awarded the certificates of matric and intermediate, he added.
He said the public, private schools and religious seminaries would be bound to adopt a unanimous curriculum. After intermediate, the madrassa students would be eligible to join civil, security and other services, he said.
For the purpose, the cabinet had also approved the budget of Rs 2 billion while Rs 580 million for the year 2019-20 would also be provided.
On the demand of madrassas, the government had provided them the period of four to five years for completely implementing new educational policy, he said. He added the government would provide all out support including financial and teaching to Madrassas after registration.
