ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A two-day consultative workshop of the National Curriculum Council (NCC) on “Minimum National Standards for Quality Education in Pakistan” organized by the ministry of federal education and GIZ Pakistan, started here Thursday.
Several meetings were held to present a revised draft at the 4th Inter Provincial Education Minister’s Conference (IPEMC), formation of National Curriculum Council by the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional training in January 2015.
It was decided in the meeting to hand the document over to the newly formed NCC for review and finalization and it would also finalize a draft and would present it to the 7th IPEMC in December 2015.
Some of the basic purposes of this workshop are; to carry out the final review of the document of minimum standards of quality education, to agree upon the implementation framework of the quality standards, and to conceptualize the National Curriculum Framework for Pakistan.
NCC has two main mandates including development of minimum national standards and development of a national framework.
Standards for the following areas were defined in the document including learners, textbooks, curriculum, teachers, assessment, early learning and development, school learning environment and comprehensive framework for implementation.
Speaking on the occasion federal secretary education Hasan Iqbal said that it was a pleasure to hold this very important session of inter provincial nature.
This step towards development of standards of quality education is key to success.
“I believe that as long as we are moving in the right direction we will reach the destination, even if we are moving slowly and gradually”, said the secretary.
But still we must always set our pace according to the situation and judge our environment before implementing anything.
He said that we should not reinvent the wheel instead work upon the existing system and make it work.
We should rectify our past mistakes and should move on, he added.
Federal Secretary said that quality education was everyone’s right but unfortunately we had not a set standard for that.
Several school systems were running in our country.
The reason for low performance in education indicators are many including lack of ownership, inadequate budgetary allocation, weak institutions, and human capacity etc.
“But I am glad that all the provinces/areas are committed to tackle the challenges that devolution has brought and ready to work together for the education, said the secretary education.
In the end federal secretary thanked the participants and lauded the efforts of GIZ in extending their support for education.
Workshop is attended by, scholars, educationists, education policy makers and government officials.
Source: APP
