Pakistan

Reinforcing education in G-B

Australia to help set up model schools and provide training to teachers.

Shabbir Mir January 27, 2011

GILGIT: Australia and the Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B) government have joined hands to provide quality education to people in the north.

“An agreement to this effect has been signed with the Australian government,” G-B Education Minister Dr Ali Madad Sher said on Tuesday.

Under the agreement 14 model schools, two each in every district of the mountain region will be constructed with assistance of the Australian government, Dr Sher said.

Teachers of the model schools will be given special training on modern teaching techniques.

“The model schools will be constructed in all the seven districts,” he said, expecting that the good results of these schools will influence others to follow suit in raising their standards too. He said that only brilliant students would be enrolled in the model schools.

The minister said education department and trainers would monitor and assess the performance of teachers at model schools and give bonuses.

The minister did not say if teachers for the model schools would be taken from existing schools or freshly recruited. However an official in the G-B education department said that a criterion would be developed to pick teachers for the schools and those at par would be selected for teaching in the schools.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 27^th, 2011.

COMMENTS (3)

Gilgiti-Baltistani | 13 years ago | Reply @Aisha Khan - Relationship: Where is such Gilgit-Baltistan which is 100% literacy rate and 0 crime rate... if it was true than why GB got 3 Shahs (Karam A Shah, Mehdi Shah, Jafar Shah) ruling the entire educated population. If there was 0 crime rate why are Shias and Sunnis slaying each other for the last many years; why is the district jails full of burglars, murderers, plunderers, corrupt officials and many more… common it is a human society and no human society is 100% in good and 0 in bad….we need to come out of the fools paradise then we will be able to overcome our shortfalls… otherwise we will keep saying we the best and get buried in the ditch of ignorance. we need to learn how to use our minds...

Aejaz Karim | 13 years ago | Reply It sounds good, but with due apologies let me say construction of more schools will never enhance the quality of education until and unless you are not getting rid of the current rotten and worthless national curriculum. Quality education is not when every student score all A’s in all subjects rather it is the phenomena of broadening their intellectual horizons; it is to give them new outlook of life, society, and environment; it is to make them creative; it is to instill curiosity and research sprit in them and encourage them question, discuss and debate everything including culture, tradition and religion- which is kid of taboo in our current curriculum. Until and unless we don’t overhaul our curriculum a quality education will remain a nightmare. Quality education comes when your system, your curriculum and your institutions open up minds not enslave them. Our educational system is enslaving our minds on historical, cultural and religious grounds. It is just creating bunches of extremists: religious, ethnic, social and political all kinds of. We need to change it in order to get on to the road to progress. Let our minds become creator rather than mere creatures. We must remember that our current curriculum is not a divine document. It has been dictated by our governments and politicians over the course of time to keep their control firm over the population by using notions like superior is our tradition, our culture, our pride, our religion etc. So it is very important to work on the soft aspect of our educational system before the hard one. Our current curriculum is based on fear, animosity, hatred and all those things that hamper progress. It has kept us locked into the past. We need to come out…. Not by bagging others for money to construct new schools, but by bringing change within…. I hope our minister may think on these line as well.

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