Islamabad To achieve momentous targets in education sector, we need not only to empower our teachers through state-of-art trainings but most importantly we have to bring them up in our national mainstream by making teaching profession as the first choice for our best brains and brilliant youths. This was stated by leading intellectuals and education experts while addressing a seminar on ‘Post 2015 – The Sustainable Development Agenda 2030: What does it mean for our teachers?’. To commemorate World Teachers Day, Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) in collaboration with United Nations Educational Science and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and Institute for Professional Learning (IPL) conducted the strategic seminar here at a local hotel here on Friday while ITA initiated, Anita Ghulam Ali Award, which is presented to honour teachers’ excellence every year since 2008 was also announced. A large number of education experts along with teachers and representatives of different development sector organisations marked their presence on this occasion. The session’s keynote speaker, Jamil Bajwa, Senior Professor from Federal College of Education, said “A good teacher can over shadow all other problems with the education system, e.g. a weak curriculum, structural short comings. However, a bad teacher with the best educational facilities can do no good for our children”. He further said, “If we are able to produce committed, well-trained, quality teachers, there is no holding back from becoming a great nation”. During the main panel discussion, ambitions and possibilities in terms of teaching and learning in line with the post 2015 agenda were discussed. The need for teachers in Pakistan to infuse global knowledge and perspectives into their teaching was mentioned, along with how to enable students to attain global competence and become visionary learners. Ms. Nargis Sultana from Open Society Foundations (OSF) said, “although we claim that teachers are the heart of the education system, however, it is imperative to revisit what it is that we as a society need to do to enable them to produce great students”. She further said that “teachers need to defy the system of rote learning and emphasise critical thinking in education. In order to achieve this, we need to move away from an examination system that gives rise to rote learning.” Qadeer Baig, Country Representative, Rutgers WPF, said that teacher is a resource, not a liability. We do not have the choice of isolating them from the post 2015 SDG agenda. “We need to project them in a positive light so that more people aspire to be teachers,” he said. Saba Saeed, Coordinator LMTF and Asst Coordinator SAFED, said, “We need to make greater efforts and come up with mechanisms for change that give teachers a voice in decision making. Working conditions of teachers should be improved; more resources need to be allocated for their professional development.” The 20th Annual World Teacher’s Day was recently celebrated on October 5th 2015 with the theme of “Empowering teachers, building sustainable societies” to express sincere appreciation and gratitude towards teachers from around the world for their altruistic devotion in the field of education, and also to encourage more quality inclusive and long term teaching standards among them.
