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Efforts stressed to engage all stakeholders to increase literacy rate

By our correspondents
September 19, 2017

Islamabad :There is a need to step up efforts for engaging all stakeholders to increase literacy rate in the country, especially in the field of adult literacy and non-formal education, said National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) Chairperson Razina Alam Khan on Monday.

"Foreign donors have pledged their full support to us for this noble cause. Joint ventures among different institutions working on education can play a positive role in achieving the goals of Vision 2025 and Sustainable Development Goal 4," she said while addressing the senior management's meeting called here to review the progress on the NCHD projects.

The NCHD chairperson said the world had moved forward from reading and writing to technology, while the country was still trying to make literate its 40 per cent population. "Now we will have to take some fast initiatives along with all stakeholders to become part of the digital world," she said.

Razina Alam said despite improvement in the indicators of literacy, the country was facing a challenging situation as the literacy rate was only 60 per cent with 57 million people unable to read and write.

She said the number of out of school children was also 22.6 million, which recently declined, but there was a need for achieving the target of vision 2025 i.e. 90% literacy rate and 100% enrolment rate.

The NCHD chairperson said Pakistan among other countries of the world had signed the Sustainable Development Goals, and Goal 4 of SDGs related to quality education and lifelong learning. She said the country could use mobile telephone apps to monitor and for evaluation of our field staff, as proposed by experts.

Razina Alam said non-formal education was the only way to address and provide access to education to the underprivileged and marginalised groups with equality.  She said the NCHD in collaboration with JICA had constituted a national forum for non-formal education in Pakistan.

"This forum has been launched to strengthen coordination, identify and advocate innovative practices of NFE, to provide a platform to the service providers, practitioners and stakeholders of the NFE to exchange experience and to engage public and private sectors in achieving 100% primary education," she said.

The National Commission for Human Development chairperson said the National Training Institute had been constituted by the NCHD in order to meet the challenges of literacy in Pakistan.

She said the initiative was meant to launch different fast track initiatives that could help in bringing 22.6 million Out of School Children (OOSCs) to schools and 40% illiterate population to the pool of a literate digital world as needed today, she briefed. This NTI will also devise policies with the coordination of all stakeholders including INGOs, NGOs and government department which will be helpful in achieving 90% literacy rate and 100% enrolment in the country," she said.

The NCHD chairperson said the monitoring and evaluation system that provided in-depth specifics of education system provided greater opportunities to policymakers for their unique challenges.

She said as Pakistan was unable to achieve the Education for All agenda by 2015, the unfinished business of EFA would be integral part of new agenda and in this connection significant improvement had been witnessed. "Since we are lagging behind in capacity building for which the National Commission for Human Development’s National Training Institute has been empowered with experts to resolve the issue," she said.

Razina Alam said learning through accelerated courses was the only way to cater for 22.6 million out of school children and 57 million illiterates, which was a challenging factor for all stakeholders of the education sector.

"The accelerated learning modules and condensed syllabus, being prepared by the NCHD would provide out of school children with an opportunity to take part in educational activities," she said.

The NCHD chairperson said the commission had imparted literacy skills to 3.84 million illiterates in the country and 320,000 children were acquiring education in 5,949 feeder schools, where 6,581 facilitators and teachers were delivering multi-grade teaching to the learners.

"The NTI will enhance the capacity of present Feeder Teachers in a short time," she said.