LAHORE: The promotion of professional and vocational education is a need of the hour to bring peace and prosperity in the country. These views were expressed by the experts at the Jang Economic Session on the ‘role of public and private sectors in modern and cheap education’ on Wednesday. The panelists were Ch Muhammad Salim, Qazi Habib, Adeeb Javadani, Shahid Saeed, Asad Saqib, and Farha Naz Naqvi while the session was hosted by Sikandar Lodhi. Ch Muhammad Salim said the equal education system could generate employment, improve law and order, and other issues; therefore, vocational education should be promoted and curriculum should be revised on modern lines. He said the curriculum should be upgraded after every two to three years while globally the cost of per student in both public and private sectors was equal. He called for increasing the education budget. Qazi Habib said the government was badly engaged in political and economic issues while it did not have the time to listen to private sector issues. He said the private sector was growing with its own resources and promoting quality education. He called for a support to the education sector without any discrimination of public and private sectors. Adeeb Javadani said the common perception about quality of education of public sector schools was low as compared to private sector so the trend of private schools was growing. He believed the provision of free education to 10 percent students could increase the literacy level. Shahid Saeed said that globally education level was good due to equal and free education system while there was a need to take necessary steps to promote it in Pakistan. He suggested the promotion of vocational education instead of conventional education. He appreciated the scholarships and other education sectors’ and students’ recognition programmes. Asad Saqib said the private universities were paying huge fee and taxes for affiliation with the public sector universities which was a major hurdle in the promotion of education in Pakistan. He said private sector could produce better results with the government’s support. He called for introducing scholarships without any discrimination of public and private sectors. He suggested taking private sector on board to promote the vocational education. Farha Naz Naqvi said the best education system was an asset for the nation so the government should initiate modern technology and research based education system without any discrimination of public and private sectors’ institutions. She said both public and private sectors should play their roles to implement the equal education system in Pakistan. She suggested evolving of centralised education system in which both private and public sectors’ officials should be included which could improve the private education system, taxes, rent, funding, and other issues on priority bases.
