AS the Cabinet members have started working, they are coming up with promising announcements in line with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan. They are attending briefings at their respective ministries and then addressing news conferences to let the nation know about their plans to bring improvement in their respective departments.
Two important sectors that indeed require immediate reforms are education and health. It was also part of PTI’s manifesto to bring visible changes in these sectors. While attending a briefing at his ministry, Federal Minister for Education Shafqat Mahmood said that bringing improvement in the education sector was the topmost priority of the government and that a national education policy will be launched soon. Indeed it is the responsibility of the government to shape policies and guidelines yet these should not remain on papers but also implemented in letter and in spirit. And one expects that the new education minister will take along all the provinces to achieve the desired results of the new government’s education policy. According to the latest report of Centre for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan, the country has a staggering 44% out of school children. Out of over 51 million children between the ages of 5 and 16 years, 56% children are attending schools from pre-primary up to higher secondary in both public and private sectors across the country while remaining 44% children are out of schools.
Thus, the new education policy should envisage plans as to how these out of school children could be enrolled. Some meaningful financial assistance to the poor families will definitely help bring these children to the schools who are engaged in domestic labour. While introducing a uniform education system and curricula, the focus of new policy should be improving the standards of education and provision of missing facilities in the public sector schools in order to save the lower and middle class families from high fees of private schools.
Source:Â https://pakobserver.net/new-education-policy/
