The Ministry of Education has constituted a high-level committee to review the curricula and textbook issues after the intervention by the President and the Prime Minister.
The Federal Minister for Education, Zobaida Jalal, stated this while talking to journalists at her residence here on Wednesday.
The Minister told that the Ministry of Education would never compromise on the very ideology of Pakistan and Islam. She maintained that to review the text books of all the levels, a National Committee has been constituted under her chairpersonship including Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Minister for Religious Affairs, all the provincial education and ministers, chairpersons of the provincial Text Book Boards, members of Parliament.
She further told that this highly powered committee has been assigned the task to identify the anomalies, repetitions, overlaps, if any, in the National curriculum for Natural Sciences finalised in 2000 and the Social Sciences finalised in 2002.
Zubaida Jalal added that the National Review Committee is bound to submit its' report within two weeks to the ministry of education. The recommendations of the committee would be implemented as the Federal Governments' directive. She said that the committee has been constituted by giving representation to all the stakeholders, especially to MMA and PPPP, which further testifies the Jamilis' government commitment to take opposition into confidence in running the affairs of the country.
Minister Jalal further said that the existing system may have also been partially responsible for he controversy. She maintained that in future, a mechanism would be implemented in which responsibility has to be fixed either on the provinces or the federal ministry of education, in a situation where the future of entire nation is involved.
Minister maintained that the team from the ministry of education has already been dispatched to the provinces to collect the text books of all the levels and other related correspondence between the curriculum wing and the provincial text book boards, to be placed before the national Review Committee for further necessary action.
To a question about the errors in the textbooks of the National Book Foundation, she said that the case has already been put up before the committee for rectification and recommendations, which would soon be made public.
She further told the reporters that no body could escape from his or her responsibility, as she would take them to the task if caught, in the ugly practice of wilfully over looking the mistakes and errors in the text books.