Sindh’s education system to be overhauled, says CM
KARACHI:02 January: In pursuance of his earlier decision to overhaul the public education sector, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has formed a committee to review the Sindh School Education Standards and Curriculum (SSESC) Bill, 2015 and give recommendations for amendments.
In this regard, he held a meeting on Monday at CM House which was attended by Education Minister Jam Mehtab Hussain Dahar, Law Minister Ziaul Hassan Lanjar, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Principal Secretary to the CM Sohail Rajput, former education secretaries Fazalullah Pechuho and Abdul Aziz Uqaili, provincial secretaries Sohail Akbar Shah, Asif Hyder Shah and other officers.
The chief minister said that he has taken a number of steps to improve the education system but it seems that the entire system needs to be overhauled and reformed to produce better results. He added that textbooks are not up to the mark, teachers are not properly trained, classrooms and schools lack proper facilities and there is a lack of motivation.
He said that the cabinet has decided to regularise the services of National Testing Service-qualified contract teachers. That is fine, he said, but the number of teachers working in Sindh is around 150,000. Event then education standard is not improving as per numerical strength of our teaching staff, he lamented.
Shah said that he has a plan to establish a top class professional teachers training academy responsible for designing training programmes for teachers. A parallel Curriculum Council would also be established to develop content of the textbooks according to ground requirements and parallel to the international level.
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He suggested linking all promotions and facilities of teachers to their qualifications, training, expertise and professionalism. The teachers who fail to qualify training programmes would be taken out of the teaching system. Teachers would be given three opportunities to qualify courses. These in-service courses would be an ongoing training process, he said.
Shah assigned the task of establishing the training academy on public-private partnership mode to the education department. He said a well-reputed organisation must be selected to partner with and the project should not take more than four years.
When the academy starts functioning, the training programmes will be started, he explained. This means the process of training and removing inefficient teaching staff would start after four years.
Former education secretary Pechuho said that the SSESC Bill is a bill of reforms. If it is implemented in true letter and spirit the education system would be reformed as envisaged by the chief minister.
Shah constituted a committee with education minister, law minister, education secretary and former secretaries to review the contents of the bill and suggest further improvement to amend it within the next seven days.
On the basis of their recommendations, leading educationists of different organisations would be taken on board to develop a 10-year education reform programme to overhaul education system in the province.Express News.
