Speakers at a meeting of Shura Hamdard Karachi chapter urged the government to fully implement education policy and to make law for free and compulsory education up to class X, enacted by each province.
The meeting was held on Thursday on the theme: "Proposed Education Policy and National Requirements" and presided over by former diplomat, Qutubuddin Aziz at a local hotel. Mrs Sadia Rashid, President, Hamdard Foundation Pakistan and Shura Hamdard Pakistan were also present on the occasion.
Speaking on occasion, academic and ex-vice chancellor of University of Karachi (KU) Professor Dr Syed Irtefaq Ali highlighted the main points of a white paper, a document to debate and finalise national education policy, prepared by Javed Hasan Aly.
He said access to education should be universal and equal. The medium of instruction for the first three years to child's education should be his mother tongue, he pointed out and added English should be introduced as a subject in all schools starting with class III. For higher education, medium of instruction may be English - the international language of research, commerce and trade.
Professor Irtefaq Ali said that Islamic education in public schools must be seriously overhauled. He suggested that syllabus should be different for developed and developing areas. The contents in secondary and higher secondary education should accordingly cater to future need and technical education must be introduced at secondary level, he said adding that technical universities should offer Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. programmes for polytechnic diploma-holders in every province.
He said cheating has emerged as an endemic problem. There was a need for concurrent massive awareness campaign to help the parents and students realise the personal damage inflicted by such practices. Corruption and political interference have had the most pernicious impact on the sector. Engineer Anwarul Haq Siddiqui said all education policies, made until now were good but they were not fully implemented that was why all of them failed to achieve their targets.
"In Japan and USA, students study for 7.30 hours while in Pakistan our students hardly study for 4.30 hours. How come our children compete with them? We have to extend education time up to 7.30 hours," he emphasised.
Haq Nawaz Akhtar, former chairman Pakistan Steel asked to stop the discussion on medium of education. The world has become a global village, so we should introduce English language as medium of education at the early stage.
Syed Mustafa Ali Brelvi said constitutional safeguard and guarantee should be given to education policy. Colonel Mukhtar Ahmed Butt (Retd) said Pakistan was a federation based on four federal units. "We should make such education policy, which is acceptable to all federating units to implement it amicably", he added.-PR