‘Education key to offset economic, social disadvantages’
By Bushra Rafique

ISLAMABAD—Minister of state for education Anisa Zeib Tahirkheili has said that education is key to development and that Early Childhood Care and Educational programmes are vital to offset socil and economic disadvantages.
She was addressing to the launching ceremony of ‘Education for All’: Global Monitoring Report 2007 in Islamabad today.
She said Government has so far spent one hundred billion rupees toprovide education facilities to school level in the country during the last five years. She said Government plans to increase education budget over four percent and to involve fully the private sector to achieve the required education objectives.
The Minister said that national plan of action for Education for Allprogramme is under implementation to ensure Early Childhood Care and Education.
Earlier Netherland’s Ambassador, Mr. Willem Andreae announced to provide two point three billion rupees annually to support basic education in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Minister of State for Education Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli Thursday stressed the need for making concerted efforts to groom teachers through building their capacity in order to ensure quality education in the country.
She was addressing as chief guest at a launching ceremony of a global monitoring report for 2007, on ‘Early Childhood Development Programme’ by UNESCO, UNICEF in joint collaboration with the Children’s Resources International Pakistan and Agha Khan Foundation here.
She said that the government was alive to the modern challenges in education sector and taking steps to equip teachers with training on modern lines to meet contemporary and future challenges for the country’s development.
She said the government was investing more resources to provide quality education to the young segment of the country’s population and new syllabus which incorporated modern requirements and being drafted in consensus with four provinces would help achieve the objective.
She said the government including early childhood education in its priority list had formalized it, which, to modern researchers, she added, was quite crucial for personality development.
However, in past, she added that owing to lack of awareness among the parents and even policy makers, the importance of providing formal education to children at early age was underestimated, but now efforts were underway to make all stakeholders cognizant in this regard.
Besides lack of coordination between various tiers of the sector, she said, the teachers were lacking teaching skills and techniques while imparting education to the children of the particular age, adding the government was now utilizing more resources to prepare teachers for imparting education to the childhood.
Moreover, she said since 2000, Gross Enrolment at pre-primary level had increased manifold in the country, in 2001, she added, only half a million children were enrolled at primary level, whereas during 2005, over 4 million were admitted at pre-primary level, she added.
The Royal Netherlands Ambassador Willem Andreae said the report monitors progress towards all six EFA goals giving special attention to issue of equity and that with a 2015 time horizon for achieving the goals, urgent action was needed to identify and enroll hard-to-reach children to move ECCE up the agenda.
Speaking on the occasion, Country Director for UNESCO Jorge Sequeira said the report shows continued progress towards Universal Primary Education especially in region farthest from the goals.