Punjab Governor Chaudhary Muhammad Sarwar Wednesday assured that Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) will be provided all possible support to run its open-schooling system. He gave this assurance during his meeting with the AIOU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Nazir Ahmed Sangi.
The AIOU has already prepared a draft plan to educate one million drop-out students through open-schooling system within a period of five years.
It will be free education that will be provided at district level throughout the country as a part of the AIOU plan to help the government to ensure quality education to all segments of the society across the country at the earliest possibility time, while implementing the UN’s Millennium Development Goals 2015. The required infrastructure for arranging classes from primary to matriculation level will be provided by the local governments, while the AIOU will arrange teaching, curriculum, admission, examination and assessment facilities to run the schools in a professional manner.
The AIOU will acquire the services of its tutors and students to run these schools, mostly at evening timings. The schools will be opened in those regions at priority basis, where the literacy rate is below 40 percent, said Dr Sangi while briefing the governor on open-schooling system.
The AIOU has recently introduced an Earn-To-Learn Scheme in order to involve its students teaching at the level of open-schooling system.
Punjab governor while eulogising the AIOU’s initiative for fighting out illiteracy in the country said that he will approach the relevant institutions at national and international level to seek support to make its educational plan successful. He also assured that infrastructure facility will also be made available to AIOU for setting up its campus office at Toba Tek Singh, his hometown. A temporary building has been provided to start the office on immediate basis that will be inaugurated today.
Dr Sangi said, a pilot project will be launched soon at one of the districts in Punjab to start open-schooling system. Necessary administrative work has already been done. A task-force has been constituted to finalise its details. The open-schooling has already been approved by the AIOU’s Executive Council, he said. About expansion of overall AIOU’s infrastructural setup, the vice chancellor said it was being done on fast-track basis, so that accessibility of quality education to its students at their nearest places could be ensured.
The AIOU’s Rahim Yar Khan building will be inaugurated by the governor in the third week of September. Dr Sangi also briefed the governor about expansion of its network of examination offices to the country’s main cities including Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta, Rahim Yar Khan, Abbottabad, Gujranwala and Mianwali. These offices will address students’ complaints regarding exams and will facilitate the students in solving their problems.
The first examination office was inaugurated in Lahore this week. This was the first step toward the decentralisation of the university’s examination system in order to provide students the best possible facilities, said AIOU Controller of Examinations Hamid Khan Niazi.
He said that in future, students would not need to approach the university’s main campus in Islamabad for queries, and instead will have all answers at their doorsteps. Punjab governor praised Dr Sangi for his dedicated work for spreading mass education in the country.
