PTI unveils much awaited “Education Policy Vision”

Unveiling the six-point “Education Emergency Policy” of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Chairman Imran Khan on Wednesday vowed to introduce a uniform education system with one curriculum for all, provision of education in Urdu at primary levels, increasing the education budget from a current 2.1% to 5% of the GDP over its five-year term spending Rs 2.5 trillion on education; and recovering looted money from corrupt politicians which would be diverted to education spending.
Addressing participants at the launching ceremony of the ‘PTI Education Policy Vision’, Khan said the PTI government would declare an “education emergency” in the country as soon as it assumes power. He admitted it would be an uphill task to implement it in totality but said without this, the dream of real change cannot be materialised.
Khan said PTI considered education a critical subject and a pre-requisite for improving the deteriorating plight of the country; hence, his party would introduce a new uniform curriculum for education in the country for which, Khan said, PTI would make all-out efforts to bring madrassah students into the mainstream.
Khan said Urdu would be the medium of instruction at the primary level with the objective to achieve equality and attain cultural and social harmony.
Khan said English being an international language cannot be ignored, but it would be taught as a subject and not in a manner that reflected cultural imperialism because that triggered wide cultural and societal divisions in the country.
The PTI chief vowed de-politicising all educational institutions and de-centralising education to the town level under which education service delivery and its management would be devolved to district and sub-district levels. Expressing confidence that the PTI’s tsunami had already triumphed in three provinces and would soon hit the fourth, Khan said it was a matter of few months “before the tsunami will sweep away all corrupt forces”.
In FATA and Balochistan, he said, educational institutions had been dysfunctional for the past ten years due to which a whole generation had been deprived of education, which was a matter requiring urgent attention.
Earlier, PTI senior leader Jahangir Tareen had said that the provincial government would only provide oversight and regulation to education delivery service following the planned devolution.
The PTI leader went on to say that the party would give a special focus to adult literacy for those from the age of 15 to 30, making up 55.8 million people of our population, and invest resources to provide functional literacy to them. He said the PTI government would give special emphasis on teacher training, besides inducting a million fresh teachers and said Information and Communication Technology (ICT) would be used extensively for teaching, learning, performance management and proactive disclosure, terming it a paradigm shift compared to current practices.