HEC approves plan to improve teachers’ skill

Islamabad

Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved an in-service programme to help the serving teachers improve their content knowledge and skills of modern teaching practices.

Under a USAID programme, 21 new Faculty of Education buildings have been constructed, all provincial colleges of education have been upgraded and 60 PhD and Masters Scholarships have been provided to prepare faculty of these institutions.

The information was shared by HEC Consultant Dr. Mahmood-ul-Hassan Butt at a meeting of representatives of Federal and Provincial Public Service Commissions and Provincial Secretaries of higher education on Wednesday to deliberate on HEC-approved Teacher Education Roadmap as well as National Professional Standards for Teachers. HEC Executive Director Dr Arshad Ali chaired the meeting.

Stressing the need for aligning teacher education in Pakistan with other professional degrees, Dr. Mahmood briefed the participants about the new roadmap, its background and objectives. He said that the new ADE and B.Ed programmes have a judicious blend of content knowledge, general education required of all four-year bachelors’ degrees and professional competencies.

He said that the roadmap phase out old programme like PTC, CT, Diploma in Education, and one-year B.Ed and replaced with four-year B.Ed (Honours) programme based on 140-142 credit hours and a two-year Associate Degree in Education of 68 credit hours.

He said that detailed curricula, course guides and supplementary teaching materials were developed and shared with teacher educators. An important step has been taken to reform recruitment rules and hiring policies in most of the provinces granting and preferential hiring of ADE and B.Ed (Hons) graduates, he added.

The participants of the meeting appreciated HEC announcement of structural changes to teacher education programme. They discussed various aspects of these changes and shared their observations about the new Teacher Education Roadmap and service structure of future teachers doing Associate Degree in Education and four-year BEd/ BSEd. Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Arshad Ali said, “HEC accords due importance to teacher education programmes as quality of education hinges upon quality of teachers.” He said that the new teacher education roadmap has two main objectives, raising teachers’ prestige in society and ensuring their professional knowledge skills and competencies. He informed the gathering that a meeting of major universities’ representatives was recently held to take them on board about the roadmap and that all of them endorsed efforts of HEC for improving quality of education. The executive director proposed holding a follow-up meeting of NCRC in January 2017 to review progress on the decisions taken. He expressed concern that some universities are still advertising for admission in one-year B.Ed programme, which is phased out.

Those who attended the meeting included Muhammad Raza Chohan, Director General (Academics) HEC; Syed Bashir Hussain Shah, Director, Elementary and Secondary Education Department, KPK; Mian Ghulam Rasool, Deputy Secretary, Higher Education Department, Punjab, Chairman, Balochistan Public Service Commission (via video link); Abdul Majeed Bhurt, Executive Director, Sindh Teacher Education Development Authority; Sabina Qureshi, Director General (Curriculum Research), Federal Public Service Commission; Dr. Fazlur Rehman, Director, HETTA, KPK; Dr. Allah Bakhsh Malik, Federal Additional Secretary Education, Ministry of Federal Education & Professional Training; Nasir Pervaiz, Research Wing, Federal Public Service Commission; Raja M. Khurshid, Chairman/Director, Azad Jammu & Kashmir Textbook Board, and Mehrban Rasheed Ch. Additional Secretary, Higher Education Department, AJK.