‘Curriculum, classrooms & citizens’transform societies: Faisal Mushtaq

Islamabad
Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq, Tamgha-i-Imtiaz, is one of the 500 most influential Muslims of the world, education chair of world’s leading Young Presidents’ Organisation, member of the World Wide Fund for Nature board of governors, national student counsellor, academician, school practitioner and a social entrepreneur. He is the rector of Pakistan’s first transnational educational campus — The Millennium University College (TMUC), founder & CEO of the Roots Millennium Schools, and serves as the executive director and member of the Board of Roots School System, Pakistan. He is also the founder and CEO of a sustainable non-profit organisation ‘Change — in Education.’ He has reformed more than 250 government schools in various districts, provinces and rural communities in Pakistan.
Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq was conferred with the most prestigious national civil award of ‘Tamgha-i-Imtiaz’ at the Pakistan Day ceremony held at the Aiwan-e-Sadr on March 23, 2013, in recognition of his outstanding services in the field of education and promotion of Chinese language across the Roots Millennium Schools as the national academic icon, educational change sponsor and globally recognised school and education management practitioner.
In an exclusive interview with ‘The News,’ Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq, commonly known as CFM, narrated his tales of passion in scaling the Millennium Roots School to where it is today.
He said “The recent launch of the Millennium University College and Millennium Schools is born out of my passion for reformation of urban classroom through transnational quality learning and globally-accredited undergraduate and postgraduate education programmes. As today, our pedagogy and andragogy promotes and refers the students who study with us as ‘Millennials’ at our campuses nationwide, we aim to help sponsor change across our teaching and learning practices, thus bridging the excellence and achievement divide.”
According to him, “For last 27 years, we have sponsored educational change, opportunity, achievement, excellence and excitement across schools, communities, towns and cities through our student-centred education system. As Millennium Schools and Millennium University College today is beyond education and schooling with 13,000-plus students and 35 state-of-the-art environment-friendly and sustainable campuses nationwide; it is changing the national education paradigm and landscape through its award-winning curriculum, beyond the classroom teaching and learning initiatives, training programmes for teachers, qualifications, results, achievements, thus promoting social change and community re-engineering.”
The 3 Cs are denominators for social change in Pakistan today; far more powerful than any political or economic revolution. The 3 Cs are ‘Curriculum, Classrooms and Citizens,’ said Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq. Today, Pakistan needs more pupils and pencils than tanks and technology. The classrooms in civilised nations transform society provided they are fuelled with quality national curriculum endorsed and owned by the citizens. “For me, the real Pakistan is the literate school going Pakistan with values and ethos close to peace, tolerance, freedom, dignity, progress and prosperity. To help raise social awareness and to take Pakistan out of the aura of darkness and illiteracy, I have built a vision and network for a GloCAL school, which is ‘global in perspective’ and ‘local in accessibility’.” “I am sure, one day the Oxford Dictionary shall include my authored word ‘GloCAL’ in their global vocabulary just like they added ‘selfie’,” he said in lighter vein.
Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq said “During my career in education and as a custodian of classrooms, I take pride in many historic achievements, but amongst all such achievements, the most rewarding for me, community, my team, Pakistan and the children include the introduction and initiative by myself to introduce Chinese language across Millennium Roots Schools, where nearly 6,000 students are learning Mandarin in Millennium Roots Schools in Islamabad, Millennium Schools as Asia’s first Information Community Technology (ICT) Digital Literacy Curriculum that I developed in partnership with Intel Education which created a digital revolution across Pakistan as almost 25,000 students across the country are benefitting from this unique skills-for-success programme, promoting the concept of student counselling and mentoring services across schools, my students entering Ivy League universities, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT and Oxford and Cambridge every year on a regular basis on full or part merit portfolio-based scholarships, co-authoring the Roots National School Curricula and our very own Montessori, primary and lower secondary qualifications with global endorsements, and the award winning Roots National Institute of Teacher Training & Education (RNITTE), which has trained more than 12,000 teachers to date.”
He said, “Young people and children motivate and inspire my soul that helps me enjoy rather love scaling literacy, development, educational change, opportunity, empowerment, excellence and excitement across communities, towns and cities across Pakistan.” “What gives me excitement and motivation is the fact that through education I am creating a social and community change, promoting opportunity and literacy across my country, and importantly by inspiring teaching, learning and educational excellence; thus setting new benchmarks of standards and delivery models in academia,” he said.
Responding to a query, Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq said: “I am regularly invited to represent Pakistan in international conferences like World Economic Forum Summer-Davos in China and Asia NGO Innovation Summit in South Korea. I am an active member of the Planning Commission and UNDP youth education and community engagement team. A member of Pak-China think tank and member of the Indus Entrepreneurship, Islamabad, and All World Network Pakistan 100 winner and Arabia 500 winner.” He is also an honorary member of the University of Cambridge International Examinations Advisory Council. He contributes regularly as a national speaker on school reforms, educational development, curriculum enrichment, entrepreneurship, role of career counselling for youth, school improvement, teacher, student and parental relationship management, where he has had the honour to win 9 awards in the categories of ‘Best Educationist of the Year 2014 Award’, ‘Best Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2011 & 2012’ by the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce & Industry, ‘Young CEO Excellence Award’ and ‘Education Industry Excellence Award’ by the Global Media Links (GML) Pakistan. The prestigious ‘Accomplished Leader Award’ by ABI, USA, ‘Appreciation and Leadership Award’ by Intel Education Pakistan, ‘Leadership Excellence Award’ by KFC Pakistan, ‘Achievement Excellence Award 2009’ by the Rawalpindi Chambers of Commerce & Industry RCCI, Pakistan, ‘The Indus Entrepreneurship Award’ by the Indus Entrepreneurs TIE, Pakistan Chapter, ‘Brand of the Year Award 2010’ by the Brands Foundation, Pakistan, ‘Environmental Excellence Awards 2010’ by the Ministry of Environment. Under his leadership Millennium Schools has also won the UNESCO Peace Pillar award. A firm believer of global harmony and celebrating cultural diversity, he launched the practice of celebrating all UN action days across all campuses of Millennium Schools. Upon his instigation Millennium Roots is the only school in Pakistan with a community service, active global citizenship and social entrepreneurship curriculum from grade 1 to 7. Robotics, ICT and Green School curriculums make our educational qualifications unique; both in content, teaching and delivery.
He is a role model to pupils for outstanding dedication and commitment to excellence in education. His phenomenal efforts and personal passion is contagious, and have been acknowledged by the president and the prime minister of Pakistan. He has been recognised by the People’s Republic of China for his services in support of Chinese language promotion.
Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq also initiated the German Pasch — Partners Schools Programme. He has signed corporate agreements with the University of London, Edexcel, CIE, British Council, Coke, Telenor, WWF, TIE Islamabad, Intel Education, China Radio International, universities within Pakistan and abroad and bridging academia-industry linkages.
About his recent initiate of TMUC, he said “Our goal is for every student to graduate with international and transformative multicultural and global competencies, whether acquired at home or abroad. In partnership with colleagues in colleges and educational providers across the globe, TMUC is a unique hub of research, service, learning, internship and community projects that infuse experiential and intercultural learning and personally enriching experiences into portfolios of our students. By providing an eclectic portfolio of transnational higher education qualifications, the TMUC would assist Roots Millennium School’s mission and commitment to developing the right set of skills, attitudes, knowledge and values within graduating ‘Millennials’ so that they can confidently meet the global challenges of the 21st century. We offer programmes and qualifications that are globally accepted because of the high academic quality, academic vigour, depth and employability in lesser time. We have been offering the University of London International Programmes, higher national diplomas in fashion and business, professional qualifications such as ACCA, CIMA and various other certifications, bringing a lot of transnational education home. Giving the youth of Pakistan an opportunity to compete with the global economy and providing value-added education that opens doors for them globally.”
Responding to a question of university acceptances, he said, “Our dreams turn into reality when RMS students break world records and score top positions in national and international examinations, attain perfect scores in SAT-II 2400/2400, receive admission offers from top national & international universities with full scholarship in the disciplines of physics, social sciences, arts, technology and engineering programmes at world top universities, including MIT, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, Dartmouth, Amherst, LSE, UCL, Kings College, Warwick, Aga Khan University, GIK, NUST, LUMS, IBA, UET and many more.”
Chaudhry Faisal Mushtaq said that he works very closely with each student and takes pride and honour to announce that his students across Pakistan have won scholarships in access of $100 million, “which is testament to our commitment to their career choices and university application support.”
He said, “We give students every opportunity to stretch himself or herself intellectually and socially. We have a superb learning environment and beyond the classroom learning activities focusing on each child’s individual needs and portfolio development this scaling opportunities for a successful university application. The RMS environment provides a perfect balance of learning and getting away from it when you need to. We are confident that the RMS experience is special and very fulfilling.”