ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training has finalized the revision of curricula for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) from class 1 to 5 and paid special focus on ethical values, civil conduct, global citizenship, tolerance and respect for diversity.
The process has been completed by a working group of education specialists, curriculum experts, teachers and government officials under the auspices of education ministry, an official of the ministry told the state-run news agency in Islamabad on Thursday.
He said, final draft of curricula has been put up for the approval process in the ministry and is expected to be approved and notified by the end of this month.
After notification, the process for textbook preparation will be started and new textbooks based on revised curriculum are expected to be developed by December of this year.
He said Minister for Education Engineer Baligh ur Rehman spearheaded and closely monitored the review process which was being actively pursued for the past few months.
The minister, he said had also issued special guidelines that the new curriculum should also concentrate on ethical values and civil conduct and the material should also focus on health and hygiene; civic sense and global citizenship; environmental protection and energy conservation; democratic culture, national harmony; tolerance and respect for diversity.
The minister in a statement said the government is placing huge emphasis on improving the quality of education and research in the country and the curriculum review project is a step forward in that direction.
“Ministry is undertaking curriculum review to match the modern international education standards”, he added.
Eight subject specialist committees comprising of 10 members were responsible for curricula review and revision. Subject Groups reviewed and revised in the exercise include: ECCE (Pre-primary education), languages (Urdu and English), General Science, General Knowledge, Social Studies, Mathematics and Islamic Studies.
It may be noted that earlier in May, the minister had launched Curriculum for Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP) which the Ministry of Federal Education had developed in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The curriculum under ALP offers complete primary education equivalent of upto class 5 to out-of-school children in short time of less than 3 years (32months).
The programme particularly caters to those children who have crossed the primary school going age and have missed their early years of schooling due to poor socio-economic backgrounds, religious and ethnic compulsions, poor results, physical or mental challenges.
