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Revised education policy by January 2016

By Kashif Abbasi 2015-06-26
ISLAMABAD: The revised education policy will be introduced in the country in January 2016.

According to a statement issued on Thursday, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2009 Review Committee has approved the roadmap of the policy.

`The committee approved the formation of a focus group by all federating units immediately. The focus group will submit concrete recommendations for addition/deletion in the education policyin pursuance of 18th Constitutional Amendment,` the statement said.

`We are going to add several new items in the education policy while some irrational targets will be deleted,` said Rafiq Tahir, the joint education adviser, who is also coordinator for the NEP 2009 review committee.

Besides adding new targets in accordance with Pakistan`s international commitments such as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), the committee will also delete some irrational items, he added.

`In the current education policy, there are some irrational clauses such as the education budget will be raised by seven per cent by 2015,teachers should have 16 years of education and the literacy rate would be increased to 85 per cent by 2018,` he said.

But a source at the Federal Education and Professional Training Ministry said there were no serious flaws in the NEP 2009.

`In fact, successive governments and the federating units didn`t pay any attention to achieve the targets set in the education policy.

The source said the literacy rate didn`t see any significant change during the last six years.

`We are almost at the same place where we were six years ago,` he said, adding this was not the fault of the policy but that of the education managers. `Literacy rate shall be increased up to 86% by 2015 through up-scaling of the ongoing programmes of adult literacy and non-formal basic education in the country,` the NEP 2009 said.

But the source said the literacy rate in the country was 58 per cent. Though it was clearly mentioned in the policy that the state would take visible measures to improve early child education, no serious steps were taken in this regard, he added.

Speaking to Dawn, a schoolteacher said according to current education policy the state was supposed to introduce food-based incentives to increase enrolment and improve reten-tion and completion rates. However, the official said no such incentive was initiated to control the dropout rates.

Meanwhile, the statement said the state minister chaired the meeting of the National Education Policy 2009 review committee in which the road map for the NEP was approved.

It said the focus group had to submit concrete recommendations for addition/deletion in the education policy in pursuance of the 18th amendment, Article 25-A of the Constitution (relating to compulsory education to children from 5-16 years of age), Education Vision 2025, and Pakistan`s international commitments.

All the federating units will nominate their provincial/area policy experts to the ministry about their participation in the national dialogue to be organised in Islamabad. The federating units may also invite the views/suggestions of the academia, civil society and public for changes to the policy.

The national dialogue on NEP-2009 would be held in the second week of November. The final draft of NEP-2009 will be submitted to the 7th inter-provincial education minister`s conference meeting for approval. Af ter this, it will be sent to the cabinet for final approval. The revised NEP-2009 will be announced in January 2016.