Unesco to help draft law for Islamabad

New legislation to make primary education compulsory across the country and eliminate discriminatory fund allocation.

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) will help lawmakers draft a new legislation that will make primary education compulsory in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

A sub-committee of Senate Standing Committee on Education, led by Senator Saeeda Iqbal, met with representatives of all provincial governments and civil society organisations at the Parliament House in Islamabad on Wednesday. A UNESCO representative at the meeting offered the organisation’s help with drafting of the bill. The committee accepted the offer and said they would contact UNESCO shortly.

The legislation will be applicable ICT and will serve as a guideline for other provinces to draft their own primary education bills. It is being drafted in line with the 18th amendment to the constitution, which, among other things, says that primary education should be made mandatory throughout Pakistan.

Civil society representatives at the meeting said the government needed to “hurry up” as there was no reason for delay.

Mukhtar Ahmed Ali, representative of Centre for Peace and Development Initiative, said that there was an urgent need to abolish the discriminatory allocation of funds in education sector. He pointed out that billions of rupees were being given to cadet colleges, where children from the elite class study. In contrast, he said, million of children do not even have access to primary education in government schools.

Mohammad Saleem, a Joint Education Advisor from the Ministry of Education, said that the drafted law should be comprehensive. The law, he said, should specify the student-teacher ratio in schools, distance between two schools and basic facilities that each school should have.

Participants at the meeting also expressed their concerns over the meagre budget allocated by for government schools.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2010.