‘Govt committed to develop minimum education standards’

Islamabad
Minister of State for Federal Education & Professional Training Engineer Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman attended the ‘Urdu Reading Skills Programme’ of Ministry of Federal education and Professional Training with the collaboration of USAID at a local hotel.
“It is an occasion of honour for me to be present at the closing session of Standard Setting Workshop. This tripartite collective effort of the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training and Provincial/Areas Education Departments and USAID is an important addition amongst the various initiatives to facilitate moving ahead of education agenda,” he said.
The minister said in Pakistan, standards for different reading skills are yet to be worked out.
“I am confident that the experts during five days workshop on standards setting would have been able to develop the Reading Standards," he said.
The minister said certainly, standard development process was neither simple nor readily available but benchmarks and standards were generally developed to measure the performance against set of standards.
He said provision of quality education was one of the most important task and we are committed to evolve minimum National Education Standards to ensure access to quality education in Pakistan.
"It is a faith accomplish that standards work as beacons to determine the collective benchmarks to monitor the functioning of schools," he said.
The minister emphasised that reading is a fundamental component of learning: students who do not learn to read at grade level by the end of grade 1 tend to fall behind in all other areas of cognitive development. If students fall behind on academic outcomes and do not achieve their full academic potential, they are often less able to contribute positively to the economy.
The minister assured that he would discuss the proposed recommendations which have been presented in the workshop in coming IPEMC (Inter Provincial Education Ministers’ Conference), so that it can be implemented in true letter and spirit.
In the end, the minister said the workshop provided an excellent opportunity by taking the holistic initiative for developing reading standards for Urdu.