ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Muhammad Baligh-Ur-Rehman on Friday said the Country’s education sector had witnessed rapid improvement in recent years due to special focus given by the incumbent government.
While addressing a seminar held in Islamabad in connection with World Literacy Day, the minister said the Country’s overall budgetary allocation in education sector increased from Rs 500 billion in 2013 to over Rs 900 billion in 2017.
The minister said number of out of school children of ages five to 15 years had reduced from over 26 million in 2013 to less than 22 million now.
Baligh-Ur-Rehman said in term of improvement of out of school children, the federal territory area witnessed remarkable improvement of 55 percent during last three years while Punjab made 23 percent and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa made 9 percent improvement.
In his address, the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Sartaj Aziz stressed the need for use of digital tools to achieve higher literacy rate in the Country, saying in today’s digital world, conventional ways of giving education to illiterate adults could not work well.
“We cannot achieve the target of 90 percent literacy rate under 2025 and 100 percent by 2030 under Sustainable Development Goals unless we do not use digital technology and tools including cell phones, laptops and computer systems,” Sartaj Aziz said.
Sartaj Aziz said by using social media and digital tools, thousands of students could be accessed within limited resources and time.
The Chairman also asked the provincial governments to allocate maximum findings for the development of education sector in the country and to achieve the target of 90 percent literacy rate under vision 2025.
The Seminar titled “Literacy in Pakistan: Challenges of Digital World” was organized by National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
