Opposition Leader in the National Assembly, Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah, has urged the educationists and the civil society to take ownership of the educational institutions for improvement in enrolment and standard of education.
He stated this while addressing a day-long seminar on measures to improve primary education in Sindh here on Saturday. It (seminar) was organised by the Sindh Education Improvement Programme (SEIP) in collaboration with IBA Sukkur.
Khursheed Shah said that big challenges were ahead in education sector such as standard of education and dropout rate of students which must be addressed. He said despite better salaries in public sector compared to the private sector, the government had failed to come up to the expectations of the people as regards the standard of education and the enrolment and literacy rate.
Sindh Senior Minister Education Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said that being aware of ground realities, the government had introduced many incentives under which stipend and free textbooks were being provided to primary schools. The government was planning to extend this facility up to metric level, he added.
He said they were striving towards improving quality by conducting more training programmes for teachers and improving the quality of textbooks.
He asked civil society to help the government in monitoring the performance of teachers and put an end to the phenomenon of absentee teachers adding that entire population of Sindh is responsible for declining education standards in public sector schools.
He said that education and increasing literacy rate are top priorities of Sindh Government and it has enhanced the annual budget of the Education Department from Rs 4 billion to Rs 14 billion during last five years.
Nisar Ahmed Khuhro said that the government was fully aware of the importance of availability of reliable data which could be used for future planning.
On the occasion, Director General, Chief Minister Sindh Inspection Team Syed Shafiq Hyder Musavi, Director Sukkur IBA Nisar Ahmed Sidiqui, Ex MPA Dr Nasarullah Baloch also spoke the seminar.
