Five education officials suspended for corporal punishment

LAHORE

School Education Department (SED) Punjab has suspended services of Ehsan Malik holding additional charge of the post of Chief Executive Officer of District Education Authority Lahore, Ms Tayyaba Butt Dy. DEO (secondary education), Ms Naghmana Irshad headmistress and two SST namely Rehana Kauser and Bushra Tufail.

These orders have been issued in connection with an incident of corporal punishment which occurred at City District Government Girls High School, Factory Area, Shahdara recently.

A 9th grade student Ms Fajar Noor, d/o Muhammad Akbar, was inflicted corporal punishment by two SST Rehana Kauser and Bushra Tufail who also took her to the top floor and pushed her down. 

The headmistress Naghmana Irshad, Tayyaba Butt DEO (SE) as well as Ehsan Malik didn’t report the matter to the higher authorities and rather tried to cover it up.

Secretary SED Dr Allah Bakhsh Malik and Special Secretary Rana Hasan Akhtar Khan, on hearing the incident, immediately rushed to the hospital. They inquired after the student, got details of the unfortunate incident from her and assured her family that justice would be ensured in this case.

Taking to The News, Dr AB Malik said the condition of the student was now out of danger after three major surgeries. He said the incident happened two days before the summer vacation, on May 23, and was not reported to authorities owing to which the officials were suspended. He said FIR had already been registered in Factory Area police station against the teachers who pushed the girl student down. 

The chief minister has taken a serious notice of the issue and on his directions, suspension orders have been issued. Secretary Schools as well as Secretary Health have also been directed to ensure proper treatment of the injured student. 

ITU: Information Technology University (ITU) will organise its first edX certificates distribution ceremony at Arfa Software Technology Park here on Monday (today).

In February this year, ITU had signed an MoU with global education platform edX, a nonprofit online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT, to integrate edX courses in the existing ITU degree programmes.

Dr Umar Saif, ITU Vice-Chancellor will award certificates among the successful students. The successful collaboration between ITU and edX is leading to the formation of the first “digital university” in Pakistan. The collaboration with edX has enabled Pakistani students to take courses from top universities in the world in their classrooms at ITU under the supervision of the ITU faculty members. An ITU spokesperson said this is the first of its kind partnership of edX with any university in which online courses on edX are integrated into classrooms and supervised exams. Students earn a course completion certificate from a university such as MIT or Harvard and course credits from ITU. Currently ITU’s first year Electrical Engineering students were enrolled into the Circuits and Electronics course at MIT through this partnership.