Experts call for revamping, restructuring education system
By Adnan Rafique

ISLAMABAD—The two-day education moot on ‘Embedding Quality Education for All’ has recommended to revamp and restructure the education system with a focus to upgrading the status and skill-building of the faculty members.
The conference titled “Embedding Quality Education for All: District Initiatives Across Pakistan-Evidence Based Planning, Whole School Development and Partnership” recommended that more creative and robust models of public-private partnerships be developed for revenue and budget based partnerships.
The conference also recommended that a life cycle approach to design, implementation and evaluation must be used for partnerships. Participants argued that education is a fundamental human right and therefore be ensured to all by all political parties.
All stakeholder must be empowered (through an education process) and their genuine participation in whole school development has to be encouraged in developing school policy, governance and monitoring (mentoring). The conference recommended that teaching needs to be seen as a profession, and be given the social and economic status it deserves. The teachers should be encouraged to innovate and salaries and other benefits should commensurate with job responsibilities and job location. Evidence-based planning and research should find a district level presence and be employed for policy development,” said the participants of the conference.
It was told that the City District Government Faisalabad (CDGF) had designed and implemented a major institutional reforms program from 2004- 2008. The project was undertaken in partnership with the UK Government and its Department for International Development (DFID) & GHK.
The project was about reforms and systemic strengthening across financial, human resource management and education, with a major focus on citizens and their voices. In order to share lessons learnt and successes on initiatives that have been mainstreamed into District Faisalabad and to hear similar initiatives and stories from diverse districts based experiences across country.
The objectives of the conference were to provide a platform for sharing experiences and positive practices with respect to capacity building at district levels; provoke national discussion and debate on what works and why; promote networking across stakeholder, policy makers and researchers on decentralized initiatives in education.
A strong focus of the conference was laid on disseminating research and evidence collected regarding the aforesaid three strands of the conference mediated strongly by practitioners and policy planners to debate on achievements, bottlenecks and ways forward. The department of education in Faisalabad is the largest employer of over 79 per cent of total 34,000 staff at the district level, for the management of 2800 educational Instituations.
Key problems facing the department had been management and accountability of staff, low level of skills and training, lack of discrimination between the teaching and management cadres. Jim Butler, Program Manager, DFID, highlighted his government’s continued commitment to Pakistan’s democratic endeavors. Professor Anita Ghulam Ali, MD Sind Education Foundation, Dr. Pauline Rose of Sussex University, Dr. Munawar Mirza, VC, University of Education, Lahore, Rukmini Banerjee Pratham India, Dr. John Shotton from Holland, and Dr. Dayananda from Sri Lanka were the keynote speakers.