End to discrimination in learning process demanded

Islamabad:The participants of the consultation organised to review Education Policy 2021 urged the government to issue specific guidelines to the provincial education departments, and textbook boards about avoiding discrimination on the basis of religion, gender, sect, language, ethnicity, etc. in all learning processes.

The consultation was organised with the assistance of the Centre for Social Justice. Participants welcomed the government’s announcement seeking recommendations about the Education Policy 2021 from stakeholders in the education sector and from citizens at large. They said this exercise would help the Ministry avoid mistakes that were made in the crafting and implementation of the six previous education policies.

Dr Yaqoob Bangash, Dr A H Nayyar, Zeeba Hashmi, Anjum James Paul, Peter Jacob, Dr Afshan Human, Abraham Murad and Anjum James Paul were among the other participants belonging to the educational institutions mainly researchers, educationist rights activists hereby reiterate long-standing historical commitment to the advancement of education that seeks to establish dignity and social development of all human beings.

The statement issued at the end of the consultation said that unfortunately, education policies so far have been subject to some unreasonable experimentation. “To mention one, the nationalization of education in the 1972 education policy damaged the quality of education substantially while the governments have been unable to allocate adequate resources for the education sector. Therefore, Pakistan lags behind other nations in the region in terms of literacy rate, learning standards, and other qualitative and quantitative aspect of education,” it mentioned.

Reaffirming the long-standing commitment of minorities to education for humanity and national causes, statement recommended the government to recognize the special role played by Christian run schools in the history and development of Pakistan and ensure that enough resources are allocated so that church run schools can be given necessary allowance and concessions in meeting their overhead expenditure since these are basically non-profitable and non-commercial institutions and do not have enough revenue to pay taxes. The statement suggested that the resource allocation should facilitate teacher training schemes in Church run educational institutions and help in the overhead expenditure in infrastructure maintenance and development.

It further stated that the policy of denationalisation adopted in the 1980s is even now not fully implemented. Nearly half of the schools and colleges nationalized are still under the control of the provincial governments, particularly the Punjab government. “We urge the government to expedite this process and complete the denationalization of Church-run educational institutions as early as possible.”

The statement expressed strong reservations about the recent bill passed by the Senate that seeks to enhance the role of teaching Arabic. “This step taken without due consultations with stakeholder, is likely to have differential effect on the children belonging to different strata, religions and linguistic traditions. Therefore we urge the National Assembly to avoid passing the bill without consulting the stakeholder particularly the educationists and linguists.”

It pointed out that the exclusionary aspects of education policies in the past have created divisions and intolerance in the society and demanded the Ministry to ensure that the education system does not show any preference on the basis of origin and identity of the students so that education is not used as an instrument of spreading hate.