Free education right of everyone: NCHD chief

Islamabad: Pakistan is among six countries, where out-of-school children number is the maximum. It is the fundamental right of all the children to complete free and compulsory education as envisaged in 4.1 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan.

This was observed by the National Commission for Human Development chairperson Razina Alam Khan while addressing the first meeting of Islamabad Forum on Non-Formal Education at the NCHD head office here on Thursday.

The forum is being organised by NCHD and JICA jointly the meeting was  attended by the members of the forum including practitioners and educationists including donors, INGOs, NGOs and government organizations financing or implementing literacy and Non-formal Education Program in the country.

The NCHD chairperson said non-formal education is the only approach to address and provide access to education to the underprivileged and marginalized group with equality. “This forum has been approved  for launching to strengthen coordination, identify and advocate innovative practices of NFE, to provide a forum to the service providers, practitioners and stakeholders of NFE to exchange experience and to engage public and private sectors in achieving 100% literacy as given in target SDGs,” she said.

Razina Alam said the NCHD had adopted a two pronged approach to address the issues of illiteracy in the country, adult literacy (for age group 14 and above) and Primary Education both formal education (for age group 5-9) and non-formal education (for age group 10-14) to achieve 90 per cent literacy rate in the country until 2025.

She said the NCHD was providing education to 320,000 children in NCHD 5,949 Feeder Schools in the remote areas to the marginalized group, whereas, 6000 adult literacy centres are in process of establishment where more than 150,000 poor and illiterate will acquire literacy as well as vocational skill to improve their livelihoods.

“In collaboration with the JICA, we have launched a model of non-formal school system in Islamabad, where 20 schools are functional in order to provide education to the children of the 10-14 age bracket, who could neither be admitted to the primary school nor do they belong to adult literacy,” she said.