Senate body for revamping public sector education
By Asghar Ali Mubarak

ISLAMABAD—The Senate Standing Committee on Education, which met at the Parliament House Thursday morning, has called for complete revamping of public sector education in order to prepare the students for meeting the contemporary challenges nationally and globally.
It also directed the Ministry of Education to play a pro-active role in teachers’ training and to introduce necessary changes in the system of examination, brining it at par with international standards. The Committee also called upon the Ministry of Education as well as the Provincial Governments to ensure timely availability of textbooks and to examine the possibility of introducing a National Scholarship System on the pattern of UK.
The Committee meeting, which was presided over by Senator Mrs. Razina Alam Khan, expressed its concern over the deteriorating standards of education in public schools and lackluster performance of students, particularly those who took F. Sc. examination this year eversince introduction of the new system of examination. It directed that arrangements be made to familiarize the students with the new system, to train the teachers, and to impart necessary training to teachers for achieving better results.
The Committee lauded the Government’s commitment to achieve the Universal Primary Education by 2015 as declared in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Earlier, the Senate Committee was given a detailed presentation on the performance of the Ministry of Education during the period 2004-07 by the Additional Secretary of the Ministry. He informed that the existing curriculum is being reviewed and updated keeping in view our future requirements. The objective of the curriculum revision is to make it vibrant and progressive in order to meet the challenges of the modern world. It was also informed that the National Education Assessment System (NEAS) is one of the key programmes of the Ministry meant to improve the quality of education. Similarly, a centralized examination system has been introduced in all the four provinces for secondary and higher secondary school certificate examinations.
The distinguishing features of the new system are:-20 % objective questions (MCQs), 50% questions for short answers, 30% questions for descriptive answers Moreover, the Ministry of Education has launched a project titled, “Establishment of 350 community schools in remote areas of FATA”. The Committee was also informed that the ECNEC has already approved establishment and operation of 20,000 basic education community schools in the country. In addition, the Ministry of Education has launched a mega project with a cost of Rs. 5.7 billion to reform the Madarassah education in Pakistan. A National Education Census (NEC) 2005-06 has also been conducted for reliable, accurate and comprehensive education database. With regard to resource mobilization it was told that the public sector expenditure on education as percentage of GDP, which was 2.20% in 2003-04 has been increased to 2.43% in 2006-07. Similarly, public sector budget on education as percentage of the National Public Budget also rose to twelve percent in 2006-07.
Some members of the Committee demanded that primary education must be imparted in national / mother language for achieving better results and there should not be over emphasis on English. They demanded that the ‘class-based’ system of education be done away with for promoting national integration and greater social harmony and best practices of the private schools be replicated in public schools.