Education policy may be launched by end of April

Currently only unreleased 2009 policy is informally being followed

ISLAMABAD: A month before the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz is about to complete its five year tenure, country's National Education Policy 2018 is likely to be launched by the end of April but not after going through a series of delays and bureaucratic hiccups.

Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training is trying its level best to launch the NEP by the end of this month with some finishing touches being put.

“The only province was Punjab that has to give us time but now the province has agreed to meet our team,” said Dr Muhammad Saleem who is part of an advisory council formed for the formulation of education policy.



He also said that the three-member committee along with an official of the education ministry would soon meet the provincial officials, in attempt to end the prevailing deadlock. Saleem also stated that the deadlock exists because Punjab remained adamant that after the 18th Amendment, education and all its policies were solely a provincial matter, hence they formed their own policy and ignored collaboration with other provinces.

Education ministry’s Joint Education Advisor Rafique Tahir stated that after incorporating comments from Punjab the policy would be all set for the launch by April end.

“We are all ready for the release of report and only the last hitch of Punjab will end any uncertainty about the launch,” he maintained.
Interestingly, the Federal Education and Professional Training Minister Balighur Rehman announced in 2015 that the policy would be released by January 2016. Same was his stance till end of 2016 and then he vowed to launch it in 2017 but to this day owing to the lax attitude of the provincial and national level officials, no headway had been made.

The policy

Meanwhile, currently only the unreleased 2009 policy is informally being followed across the country and right after 18th Amendment even that was ignored.

“Technically there is no education policy in practice in the country,” said another member of the advisory council who wished to remain anonymous. He said the policy of 2009 was made by a relative of the then education minister Jahangir Ashraf Qazi with budget of Rs40 million with no mention of early and higher secondary level education. “While the current one has only been made out of total budget of Rs2.6 million,” he said.

New policy

The new education policy has 19 chapters that specifically focuses on early childhood education, primary, secondary and higher secondary level. According to another member of the advisor council, each and every chapter mentions the purpose and objective of the policy. “It has details about sustainable development goals with regard to international and national obligations”.