close
Friday March 29, 2024

Call to revamp students grading, assessment criteria

By Our Correspondent
December 14, 2019

LAHORE:Speakers at a panel discussion at Government College University (GCU) here Friday laid stress on revamping grading and student assessment criteria in educational institutions to improve the quality of graduates.

Speaking at the panel discussion titled “Leveraging higher education institutions to kick start inclusive growth in Pakistan” they demanded the government promote gender equality and linking its economic initiatives with the education policy for an inclusive growth.

Punjab Minister for Higher Education Raja Yasir Humayun Sarfraz chaired the panel discussion which was moderated by GCU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi.

In his key note address, head of Innovative Development Strategies LLC, USA, Dr Sohail Jehangir Malik shared his research work focusing on the inadequacy and poor quality of the available economic data, the decayed capacity for analyses, implementation and service delivery and various disconnects within the structure of the economy. He demanded the government capitalise on the existing resources by involving the bright and energetic minds of universities in monitoring, evaluation, capacity building and policy-making. He said economic surveys done by academia were far more accurate than the reports published by the government departments.

Punjab Minister for Finance Makhdoom Hashim Jawan Bakht briefed how past policies led to widening of economic inequalities in Punjab, especially between the Centre and the Southern Punjab. “This unequal distribution of resources created disparity among regions and inequality among people in the province,” he added.

He pledged to allocate maximum resources for education and health sector. He said the cabinet had passed a law that resources allocated for development of underdeveloped areas in the budget would not lapse.

Prof Asghar Zaidi shared his experience of working in the Seoul National University, South Korea, where students briefed the industries about their research projects from for the day one of their classes. He said high-tech industries and their research centres were part and parcels of universities in the West. He announced holding discussions on these crucial topics at GCU regularly to bridge gap between academia and policy-makers.

Raja Yasir cited the production of poor quality of graduates and unskilled labour force over a period of time as one of the major reasons for failure to attract the high-tech industries to Pakistan. He said public sector universities needed to improve the standards of their education and research to attract industries. He agreed with a participating researcher that universities needed to revamp grading and assessment systems to produce quality graduates.

The minister said numbers obtained by students in exams didn’t rightly reflect the knowledge level, personality and skills of students. He briefed the participants about the government initiatives for improvement in higher education sector.

MPA Shabana Bashir Dr Faisal Bari and Dr Zarqa Suharwardy Taimur also addressed the panel discussion attended by a large number students and faculty members.

Road accidents: The Punjab Emergency Service/Rescue 1122 responded to 626 road accidents in all 36 districts of the province during the last 24 hours.

Five people died and 687 suffered injuries in the road accidents. As many as 397 badly victims were removed to different hospitals while 290 victims with minor injuries victims were given first aid by the rescue medical teams.