‘Uniform syllabi to help end disparity in education system’

LAHORE:As per results of a youth referendum at GC University Lahore, 60 percent of the country’s youth believes that the Single National Curriculum (SNC) will help reduce the socio-economic disparities of the education system.

The GCU’s Debating Society had conducted the youth referendum on SNC among the participants of the first All Pakistan Summit of Student Societies 2021 in which students from more than 32 universities across the country participated.

According to the results, about 60 percent of the country’s youth believes that the Single National Curriculum would help reduce the socio-economic disparities of the education system. GCU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi said the main objective of the youth referendum was to gauge the student body’s public opinion about the newly introduced Single National Curriculum. “The survey garnered an amazing response; 442 votes were received and analyzed in order to make up the results,” he said.

The survey included agendas which talked about various aspects of the SNC and how it would impact the education system of the country. When asked whether the SNC would help reduce the socio-economic disparities of the education system. 59.95pc of the voters said yes, 34.61pc said no while 5.42pc were undecided in their decision.

In the second agenda, it was inquired if the voters believed that the SNC would help Pakistan’s education system compete with the international standards of education. 44.79pc said attested yes, 45.47pc said no and 9.50pc remained undecided. The third agenda focused on the representation of minorities and women and if the representation co-opted in SNC was culturally appropriate. 54.07pc said yes, 35.06pc said no while 10.85pc were unsure.

The fourth agenda centered on National Unity. It inquired if the voters believed national unity would increase owing to SNC. 63.10pc said yes, 28.95pc said no, and 7.91pc remained unsure. The fifth agenda tackled with the structural issues and whether they could be solved with SNC 43.43pc voters said yes, 46.60pc said no and 9.95pc said they were not sure. The VC appreciated hard work of students Eza Qamar, Hamza Jaleel, Nouman Ehsan, Areesha Ehsan and Ahtasham Chattha who worked tirelessly to make this referendum possible.

PU moot: Punjab University Vice Chancellor Prof Niaz Ahmad has urged the researchers to focus on creation of new knowledge which can help solve social problems being faced by the society and have a good impact over the relevant discipline too.

He was addressing the inaugural ceremony of 4th international conference on Gravitation and Cosmology organised by PU’s Department of Mathematics in collaboration with Centre of Excellence in Solid State Physics, Department of Space Science and Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP). Chairman Department of Mathematics Dr M Sharif, national distinguished prof Dr Asghar Qadir, faculty members, researchers from various parts of country were present on the occasion while 25 foreign scientists from China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, USA and Uzbekistan are participating in the conference online. Dr Sharif said the conference had been dedicated to Prof Asghar Qadir on his 75th birthday who is father of gravitational theory in Pakistan. He said that the conference would cover a wide range of interesting topics in general relativity and gravitation, alternative theories of gravity, mathematical and relativistic aspects of cosmology etc. He said that the research group of gravitation of cosmology was working hard to produce quality research papers as well as MPhil/PhD students.

During the last three years, this group has produced 11 PhDs, 55 M Phil scholars and had published a total of 250 papers in high quality journals with a cumulative impact factor of more than 600.