Revolutionary measures have received a nod from the President of Pakistan to transform the educational regime at grassroots level to cater to the emerging challenges in the diverse spheres of life.
The academic system is being tailored and overhauled to ensure quality education in different disciplines and optimal utilisation of financial allocations in line with a set of reforms approved by the National Commission for Government Reforms (NCGR) Steering Committee, said NCGR Chairman Dr Ishrat Hussain.
The raison detre of the entire exercise is to bring massive transformation to the educational system enabling it to live up to the growing needs of the country in the aftermath of fast global developments in various spheres, said Dr Hussain in a panel interview with the APP at the PM Secretariat.
Unveiling the decisions of the Steering Committee, co-chaired by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, he said District Educational Boards would be set up to regulate the academic institutions in an effective manner at district level.
"The approved reforms include establishment of district educational boards, separation of teaching and management cadres, school management committees, role of provincial and district governments, public-private partnership, merit based scholarship etc," he added.
The seven-member Steering Committee, which is co-chaired by the President and the Prime Minister, includes Chief Ministers of four provinces and the NCGR Chairman as its members.
Dr Ishrat Hussain said the establishment of District Educational Boards would provide the much-needed civil society participation in education planning and the introduction and design of initiatives to improve educational outcomes.
Elaborating the role of Boards, he said they would develop criteria for establishing primary and secondary schools and ensuring that selection of teachers was made in a transparent manner. "The training of teachers will be rigorously carried out by developing and enforcing recruitment and promotion criteria, developing procedures, teacher deployment and pre-service and in-service training," he said.
In this age of specialisation, he said there was a need to develop an organisational structure under which there were separate teaching and management cadres. Any teacher having acquired five years experience either in school or college could apply for selection to the management cadres, he added.
"The teachers will be tested for aptitude, suitability and skills and those selected will assume the positions of head teachers and principals rising to other management positions in the districts and provinces," the NCGR chairman said.
He said the NCGR would urge the provinces to adopt a uniform system so that the variations in the standards did not put the students of any province at a relative disadvantage.
"The proliferation of examination boards will be discouraged and ultimately a National Testing Service will be entrusted the task of designing the examinations, while the boards will become responsible for administration of these examinations and certification," the NCGR chairman said.
As one of the millennium development goals was to raise the female enrolment ratio in the rural areas, the teachers would be employed at primary school level wherever possible, he said.
Referring to the establishment of an Endowment Fund for merit-based scholarships, he said the provincial governments would sponsor tuition fees, accommodation and other education-related expenditures of those students who got top positions in the board examinations. He said a voucher of 300 rupees each would be paid to those students who were talented but could not afford their educational expenditures.
Dr Ishrat Hussain said since the operational aspects of service delivery under the devolution framework had been delegated to the district governments, the powers of recruitment, postings and transfers of teachers for primary, secondary and high schools would also be delegated to the district governments. He said other provincial governments should also provide conditional grants to the district governments for expeditious completion of missing facilities in the educational institutions in line with the criteria adopted by the Punjab government.
The NCGR chairman said the universities were established under the charter prepared by the provincial governments but they were funded by the federal government who was also responsible for preparing curriculum for their disciplines.
Encouraging the public-private partnership to provide quality education, Adopt-a-School Programme would be launched to allow private sector to use government school buildings for evening classes. Dr Ishrat Hussain said the National Management Information System would be linked with such provincial systems to develop an integrated and inter-linked system that would help a great deal in decision-making.
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