Minister of State for Education and Professional Training, Balighur Rehman was chief guest at the inaugural session of first National Graduate Conference at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), here on Wednesday. Speaking on the occasion, the minister appreciated the new initiative of AIOU in providing opportunity to the scholars of different discipline to share their research work among one another to pave the way for the future inter-disciplinary collaboration. He emphasised the need for collaboration, usage of technology and focus on emerging technologies as instrumental for addressing the contemporary challenges.
He further said that government has already instructed Higher Education Commission to promote applied research and to work with universities for building, strengthening and sustaining academia-industry and academia-government linkages. He reiterated that providing quality and accessible education is one of the top priorities of the present government and all-out efforts are being made in this regard.
While recognising the need for further improvement in education sector, he said that statistics on education recently released, were encouraging though, in terms of increase in enrolments and reduction in out of school children. He further said that the province of Punjab had outperformed other provinces in all indicators and that those criticising development projects and vocalising the need for prioritising education are lagging in improving the conditions under their own (provincial) governments.
He maintained that spending on education as a percentage of GDP has already increased in present government from around 1.9 percent in 2013 to 2.5 percent in 2016. He informed the participants that the government has all the serious intentions to further increase the education spending for which further fiscal space is being created. He said that with the sound fiscal and monetary policies duly acknowledged and appreciated by the international observers and rating agencies, the government has achieved a significant increase in GDP growth and tax-to-GDP ratio, while further improvement are in the offing.
Earlier, in his welcome address the Vice Chancellor AIOU Dr Shahid Siddiqui apprised the minister that the aim of the conference was to provide a platform for young researchers from all over the country to showcase their research. He said that the conference was the first of its kind at AIOU where students of different disciplines belonging to various universities all over Pakistan would share their research work at one forum providing an opportunity for inter-disciplinary learning. Dr Shahid also informed the minister that presently around 1.3 million students are enrolled with AIOU and 56 percent of them are female; mostly belong to the remote or conservative areas with education accessibility issues.-PR
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