Minister seeks VCs suggestions to improve education

LAHORE ; Caretaker Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Madad Ali Sindhi said that there is a need to strengthen the country’s education system to empower youngsters in the real sense.

He expressed these views in a meeting with vice-chancellors of universities at the University of the Punjab on Saturday.

He said when he took charge of his portfolio there were some challenges in front of him which included quality of education, skills national training, higher education and missing of basic facilities in schools.

He said he felt that an agenda should be evolved so that a general complaint about lack quality in higher education could be sorted out. The minister said that the journey in this regard was started from Karachi and he met vice chancellors of all universities in Sindh and later visited Quetta. He said today he was in University of the Punjab and interacting with VCs of different universities. he said the purpose of his visit was to have interaction with VCs and listen to their problems and get feedback to improve higher education in the country. Sindhi said that he would visit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and form a comprehensive strategy which would be presented to the Prime Minister and the President so it could help the next government improve the education system. “It is very unfortunate that in the past governments did not focus on development of public schools,” he said and added that 20 million children were out-of-school and there was a dire need to bring them back. The minister said that corruption and misuse of funds were big problems that were hindering the development process.

He said that he had visited Sindh University and the IR chairman there did not even know about the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka so there were many loopholes which needed to be plugged. He said there was a need to improve performance, funding and PhDs in the education sector.