"Support to the private schools is an important policy matrix of the Punjab government as nobody could ignore their role in the spread of education and therefore, the government is proactively working, as a facilitator, to enable the private schools to further the cause of knowledge in the province."
This was the substance of a policy dialogue held between a 20-member delegation of All Pakistan Private Schools Welfare Association (APPSWA) headed by its Central President Syed Zulqarnain Shah and Managing Director Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) Mohiuddin Wani, at latter's office here on Tuesday.
At the outset, the PEF managing director said that it is knowledge that sets people free. And it is education that assures freedom and democracy. Knowledge is the real catalyst of change, he observed. He said further that for staying on top, we need to develop the leaders of tomorrow. He said the leaders of the 21st century are in our schools right now.
They are our best hope for keeping our citizenry informed, teaching the next generation of leaders, and ensuring that our future generations never take for granted their liberty and freedom. "Education is the real engine of democracy and the balance wheel of society."
Teachers should commit themselves with a fierce dedication to education, for education is nothing less than the key to a strong, free, proud nation and the cornerstone of our liberty and freedom, he added. He said that government would ensure every possible facility to the private educational institutions for the promotion of education.
On this occasion, Central President Zulqarnain Shah assured full co-operation on behalf of APPSWA for enhancing the literacy rate and provision of quality education and demanded to broaden the sphere of Foundation Assisted Schools Programme, up to whole province, instead of limiting it to 30 schools per district only.
He also insisted for the establishment of a complaint cell in the office of the Foundation and demanded opening of sub-offices in other districts so that their problems could be solved timely and at the concerned district level. The delegation demanded that the NGOs, earlier blacklisted by the Punjab Education Foundation, should not be included in the Cluster Based Training Programme and Superior Leadership Development Programme.
The delegation also demanded to expand the sphere of Education Voucher Scheme up to the whole province and asked to launch New Schools Project in those districts where Foundation Assisted Schools Programme and Education Voucher Scheme Programme does not exist at the moment. The delegation also demanded that representatives of private educational institutions, especially APPSWA, should be given participation in the PEF's Board of Directors so that the problems of the private schools could be solved in a more proper way.
Wani assured the delegation of his support in resolving their genuine problems and told the Foundation would consider their demands sympathetically. The APPSWA delegation comprised of Sadiq Siddiqui, Sh Javed Aziz, Muzammil Iqbal Siddiqui, Sh Arshad, Rana Naveed Asghar, Tariq Chaudhry, Tahir Shah, Khalid Goraya, Sadiq Ali Hayat, Hafeez Nizami, Rizwan Yousaf, Chaudhry Tariq, Mohammad Azam, Dilshad Ahmed and others.
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