The Senate Standing Committee on Education, Science & Technology met here at the Parliament House under the chairmanship of Senator Rozina Alam Khan, said a handout issued here on Wednesday.
The committee had appreciated the Ministry of Education for improving the standard of education by chalking out vibrant and dynamic curriculum thus putting the country on road to socio-economic development. The committee made these observations while discussing the curriculum guidelines and progress made on it so far.
Federal Minister for Education, Lieutenant General Javed Ashraf Qazi (Retd) informed the committee that curriculum was previously revised on varying intervals in the wake of emerging needs in collaboration with all the stakeholders. He said that now the government had decided to carry out a comprehensive revision of the curriculum after every five years.
The National Curriculum Council comprising experts in the field of science and social sciences was constituted to review and submit the draft curriculum. He said that the council was assigned the task to review the curriculum of compulsory subjects for classes I-XII.
He said that the draft was shared with the education ministries of all the four provinces for consideration and for suggestions if any to develop a uniform curriculum for the country. He termed the response of the provinces in giving suggestions and recommendations for the development of a viable curriculum as positive aimed at brining improvement in the standard of education.
REGULATORY AUTHORITY TO BE FORMED: He also dilated upon the guidelines developed for the curriculum revision and assured that nothing would be published against Islamic ideology and ethics.
The committee was informed that an ordinance would soon be promulgated to establish a regulatory authority to be known as the Islamabad Capital Territory Private Educational Institutions (Regulation and Promotion), Regulatory Authority.
The authority would register, regulate and promote privately managed educational institutions in ICT and would check the mushroom growth of private educational institutes.
The committee members appreciated the steps taken by the Ministry of Education for thorough revision of curriculum taking all the stakeholders into confidence and termed it a step in the right direction.
It, however, directed the Ministry of Education that a system of checks and balances should be developed to check the irregularities prevailing in private sector education and improve the standard of the institutes working in private sector.
It suggested that the Ministry of Education should expedite its efforts to introduce a Bill in the Parliament to regulate the educational institutes working in private sector and expressed the view that the fee structure of such institutes should also be regulated appropriately.
Minster of State for Education, Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli, the FBISE Chairman, senior officers of the Education Ministry, Senators, Tahira Latif, Dr Abdul Khaliq Pirzada, Rehana Yahya Baloch, Dr Muhammad Said, Sajid Mir and Professor Muhammad Ibrahim Khan also attended the meeting.