Collected efforts for cause of education emphasised

Islamabad: With Pakistan being unable to achieve the Education for All agenda by 2015, we all have to act together for the cause of education as our religious, social and national responsibility.

This was stated by chairperson of the National Commission for Human Development Razina Alam Khan during the senior management's meeting at her organisation's head office here on Monday.

“Education is the only weapon through which we can change the minds. It enables us to think positively and therefore, this is the outmost requirement of today’s society to deal with the evils of communities like poverty, unemployment, social injustice in a society, gender discrimination and disparities and criminal acts,” the NCHD chairperson said.

She said the NCHD had successfully piloted the jail project in Sargodha and intended to extend it to other jails of the country with an aim to make convicts the useful citizens by imparting literacy along with vocational skills to help them earn respectable livelihood.

"The adult literacy centres will help rehabilitate convicts as useful part of society by changing their attitudes through education and psychotherapy. Our special focus is on women and children," she added.

She said besides regular programmes, the NCHD managed to have different educational and literacy and skill related projects through public-private partnerships in collaboration with donors and provincial governments.

She added that those projects dealt with issues such as elimination of poverty, access to education, establishment of formal and non formal basic education institutions, mainstreaming of madrassas, setting up of IT Centres, data collection activities and setting up of Skill Development Centres.

"The NCHD through its Adult Literacy Programme has imparted literacy skills to 3.84 million people in the country, while 320,000 children are acquiring education in 5,949 feeder schools. We are working in close collaboration with all stakeholders for further enhancement in the projects as well," she said.

The NCHD chairperson said the government had taken steps for improving educational statistics in the country. "The number of out of school children recently declined to 22.6 from 24 million. However, we have to achieve the target of vision 2025 i.e. 90 per cent literacy rate and 100 per cent enrolment rate," she said.

She said the accelerated learning courses with condensed syllabi were the most beneficial ingredients for 22.6 million out of school children and 57 million people without formal education, which was a challenging factor for all stakeholders involved in education.

She said the NCHD National Training Institute was designing the accelerated learning modules that would provide the out of school children a second chance to take part in educational activities.

"The NTI will enhance the capacity of its managers as well in a short time," she said. She said the NCHD had launched a massive campaign for the enrolment of such children and enrolled 45,800 children to feeder schools this year.