Progress: Out-of-school children number dropped to 22m from 26m

Baligh says govt pumping more rupees in education sector

ISLAMABAD: The government is pumping more and more money in the education sector knowing well that there were many leaks in the system.

Although there are several loopholes in the country’s education system, however, increase in annual education budget from Rs550 billion to Rs850 billion is one of many other positive initiatives taken by ruling party, said Federal Education Minister Balighur Rehman on Wednesday.

He said that number of out of school children decreased significantly from 26 million to 22.6 million during 2013-17. Besides, the minister said, the government is on the path to progress and expects to increase the economic growth rate to 6 per cent and add around 10,000MW to the national grid by the end of this year.



The minister was addressing to the groundbreaking ceremony of new campus of Centre for Advanced Studies in Engineering (CASE) here at sector B- 17. He said that Pakistan has been gifted with young population which would prove to be a valuable asset for the country.

“Establishment of such institutes would be a big opportunity for the youth to enrol and enhance their capabilities at maximum level”, he added.

While recalling some odds faced by CASE due to non-fulfilment of criteria set by Higher Education Commission (HEC), Balighur Rehman said these obstacles ultimately proved positive for the CASE as it got huge piece of land to build a vast campus which, he said, would be converted in university hopefully.

He suggested the CASE administration that although they have a good team to perform, however, the quality of education should not be compromised at any cost.

The minister further said that large number of students was beneficiaries from public-private partnership programs being run in the country very successfully.

Talking about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and many other mega projects, he said” “I know many projects are long run and cannot be completed in this tenure as some of them are set to complete by 2030. However, they will all benefit of the country and nation”.



He said the social action projects are student-led initiatives that tackle issues related to local communities, ranging from environmental actions to issues of social justice and gender abuse. These projects help develop students' leadership and team building skills and also to enhance their understanding of local issues making them committed to change, he recalled.

Similarly, he added, in the past overall 26 per cent faculty members in the universities were PhD which now increased to 40 per cent that should be increased more as the developed countries have 100 per cent ratio of PhD faculty members in their universities.

National Assembly Standing Committee on education and professional training Chairman Amirullah Marwat said that many local leaders of his party insisted him to give approval of CASE bill, but I ever rejected requests due to condition that “the set legal criteria could not be ignored in this regard”.

He said that country needed creativity instead production of just more PhDs. “without industry linkages with academia, no country can be developed”, he suggested.

CASE’s official briefed to participants of the ceremony that so far the institute has produced over 50 PhDs and over 1850 graduates and others while it offered 10 percent merit based scholarship in each academic program mme.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2018.