Integration of technical, vocational training with education stressed

Islamabad

No nation has progressed without excelling in education and education is not just reading but it has to be integrated and glued with technical and vocational training. We therefore need to produce well trained and educated workforce for skill development and quality education.

This was stated by National Commission of Human Development (NCHD) hairperson Razina Alam Khan while addressing a meeting of the senior management at the NCHD headquarters here on Monday.

The NCHD chairperson said the Millennium Development Goals had been concluded and the world had embarked upon the new journey of Sustainable Development Goals.

“In order to meet international commitments, the NCHD under the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training is working with the mandate to support and augment human development efforts, which include adult literacy and universal primary education,” she said.

Razina Alam Khan said the non-accessibility was one of the major reasons for low enrollments and high rate of out of school children i.e. 24 million. She said the NCHD’s 5,949 community feeder schools in the remote area were providing access and quality education to the underprivileged and marginalised communities, where 6,581 teachers were imparting multigrade teaching to 310,146 students.

“When education facilities will be provided on the doorstep of the community, enrollment rate will increase and drop-out ratio will decrease but in 2017 we have to work with further zeal and passion to increase enrollment,” she said.

The NCHD chairperson said it was a matter of great satisfaction that the commission's teams in the field were performing well and putting all their efforts for the mission.

She said the National Commission of Human Development has launched many successful initiatives and models on adult literacy and non-formal education in the past and that in seminaries, it had planned to enhance the mainstreaming from primary to matriculation level.

Razina Alam Khan said strategies aimed at equallising opportunities in education for girls would help increase literacy rate as out of 57 million illiterates, 70 per cent were women and out of 24 million out of school children 51 per cent were girls.

“Keeping in view education statistics, we need to move ahead and need of a national training institute and its establishment is a prime requirement for the National Commission of Human
Development in order to cater with the challenges of literacy in the country. The Institute will facilitate the professionals of the Non formal Education (NFE) Providers in capacity building, material development, programme designing and execution, research and development
and producing a data bank," she said.