The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has finalised the curriculum of Environmental Science for public sector universities of Pakistan.
The National Curriculum Revision Committee (NCRC) after thorough three-day discussion finalised draft of the curriculum on Wednesday taking into account the recommendations/suggestions of all the public sector universities where Environmental Science is being taught.
The final draft of the curriculum prepared by the committee would be sent to all the Universities of Pakistan for implementation.
The NCRC, in addition, gave a number of recommendations to strengthen the discipline integrating socio-economic themes with discipline of natural sciences pleading that Bachelor degree programme should be of 4 years instead of 2 years.
The committee suggested the nomenclature "Bachelors of Environmental Science (Hons) for this 4 years programme.
About the admission criteria, the committee recommended that students with FSc Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering or equivalent should be considered eligible for admission in Bachelor of Environmental Science Programme and there should also be a Master in Environmental programme in the institutions with all the facilities.
The NCRC further recommended that the structure of the programme should have both the course work as well as research thesis and the Masters in Environmental Science should be a one-year programme after 4 years Bachelor degree.
The committee was of the view that there should be some core courses and rest of the courses be listed for specialisation in various fields.
These courses should be enlisted and may be offered by the institutions depending on their resources and locations.
The prominent Educationists, faculty members, experts of the discipline and representatives of several involved in Environmental Science attended the meeting.
Professor Dr Shafiqur Rehman of Peshawar University and Dr Muhammad Irfan Khan from AIOU, Islamabad was the Secretary of the meeting.