Govt to focus on promoting non-formal education

Minister says separate teachers training programmes are being developed independently

LAHORE: The Punjab government will take all stakeholders on board to develop strategies and promote non-formal education to achieve literacy goals of the SDGs, revealed Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education (L&FBE) Minister Dr Farrukh Javed.

He was speaking at the one-day consultative workshop for Development of Communication Strategy and Innovative Literacy Intervention at a local hotel on Monday. Dr Javed said that separate teachers training programmes were being developed independently for the non-formal education sector.

He added that community mobilisation and motivation always played a positive role in improving educational indicators. He said that the community should come forward to enhance the literacy level in their areas.



The workshop was designed to get input to develop a communication strategy for L&FBE department for future use and to raise awareness among the public.

The workshop also focused on engaging stakeholders to participate in literacy interventions to enhance ownership of the community and to achieve the targets of SDGs 2030.



Dr Javed said that the department always welcomed feedback from stakeholders like parents, academia, and students to propose future programmes regarding schools, textbooks, teachers' quality enhancement and governance issues.

The participants of the workshop advised on improving the incentives system for literacy initiatives, especially for girls at all levels of education.



They suggested that salaries of teachers should be linked with students' performance.

Another suggestion for non-formal education was to improve salaries of teachers and link it with enrolment and retention of children.

The participants suggested the same incentive model should be used for adult literacy programmes. It was proposed that a separate assessment framework should be developed for the non-formal education sector.

L&FBE Secretary Dr Ismat Tahira, academics, representatives of NGOs, teachers, children, parents, literacy mobilisers, district education officers, media persons and representatives from different concerned government departments participated in the workshop.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2017.