‘Religious education not compulsory for all’

State minister for education says Non-Muslim students will be exempted

GILGIT: Non-Muslim students will be exempted from religious education that has been made compulsory till class 12. This was said by State Minister for Education Balighur Rehman on Friday.

Balighur Rehman’s comments came at the end of the eighth meeting of Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference held in Gilgit.

“The religious education is for Muslims only so they become responsible [people],” Balighur Rehman told journalists in Gilgit. G-B Minister for Education Ibrahim Sanai and Balochistan Minister for Education Abdul Rahim Ziaratwal were also present on the occasion.



Quality of education

Balighur Rehman said a new system will be introduced for examinations to help end the trend of cramming.

“In addition, we have also worked on ending the use of unfair means in examinations,” the federal minister said.

He added action will be taken against boards which fail to end the use of unfair means in examination. According to Balighur Rehman, syllabi will be upgraded and the quality of paper of textbooks would also be improved so that it could be used for a longer period of time.

With support from National Database and Regulatory Authority, he said, a system would be developed to send back to schools children who are either dropouts or not registered in schools.

He added the National Syllabus Council has been set up to help set educational standards in the country, as part of achieving the millennium development goals.



More avenues

He said two vocational training centres will be established in G-B – the federal government would financially support them.

When asked, Balighur Rehman said inclusion of material in the curriculum about regional culture and languages will be the task of provincial governments.

On the occasion Ziaratwal said his province was at the bottom in the ranking of education.

“But we are putting in our energies to secure a better future for our youth,” he added.

Besides, Sanai said his region required guidance and support from other provinces as systems in G-B were not strong enough to compete with those in the rest of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2016.