ISLAMABAD: Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) and the Parwaan Early Childhood Education Development (ECED) Centre of Excellence have joined forces to promote early child education. Both organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Thursday, pledging to offer a postgraduate diploma to promote early child education.

The signing ceremony was attended by the Minister of State for Federal Education Mohammad Balighur Rehman.

`A child`s formative years are very important, but unfortunately there seems to be some kind of confusion among teachers and parents about when a child should be sent to school, and what and how they should be taught,` the minister said.

He said that the establishment of the ECED centre at AIOU was the need of the hour. He said offering a yearlongpostgraduate course (30 credit hours) in this regard is a stepping stone.

`A teacher trained in ECED will be in a better position to understand how a child should be taught in their early years, which are very important in develop-ing the personality of a child,` Rehman said.

He also highlighted the demand for Accelerated Learning Programmes for children aged 12 and above.

Speaking at the ceremony, Dr Shahid Siddiqui commended AIOU`s many initiatives, such as their programmes for bringing out-ofschool children into education institutions, and education programmes for jail inmates, which are free of cost.

Parwaan president Mehnaz Aziz said that the partnership between the Parwaan ECED Centre for Excellence and AIOU caters to the vast demand for expertise in early childhood education.

According to the MoU, Parwaan will provide AIOU with technical support in its efforts to offer the postgraduate course, and will also help set up the ECED resource centre at AIOU.

The university will also constitute a committee to work with Parwaan to develop content and instructional material for the course.

The ceremony was attended by the Department of Early Childhood Education and Elementary Teachers Education chairperson Nasir Mahmood, senior government officials and AIOU faculty.