KHAIRPUR: Muslims have remained leaders in education, medicines, surgery and other fields for a long time only because they respected teachers and the world learnt a lot from Islam, but nowadays Pakistani society is ignorant about the importance of teachers.

This ignorance resulted in growth of ghost school and college teachers in society, Higher Education Commission (HEC) Prof Dr Mukhtar Ahmed said while speaking at the concluding session of a three-day `International Conference on Research in Education & Technologies (ICRET) 2017` organised by the department of teacherseducation of the Shah Abdul Latif University (SALU) in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) at the university`s main campus here on Saturday.

Speaking as chief guest, the HEC chairman said the commission was the `driving force` in the establishment of faculties of education across the country with the generous support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Objectives of USAID were to train teachers for imparting quality education, he said, adding that the HEC was committed to education reforms in order to produce quality education.

He said the HEC had closed down 80 MS and M.Phil programmes of various universi-ties owing to lack of quality education and research; they were not meeting the minimum criteria.

He said the HEC firmly believed in the autonomy of institutions and it was high time that accountability might be promoted on a large scale. He congratulated the SALU administration for organising this productive and result-oriented conference on an important theme.

Prof Dr Parveen Shah said, during the conference deliberations, a result-oriented development had taken place and various modalities emerged to enhance the capacity building of teachers. Suggestions and recommendations of the conference would be sent to policy makers to help them devise more practical education policy ofthe country.

She said teachers played an extraordinary part in the lives of children in the formative years of their development and the importance of teachers was something that could not be underestimated.

She remarked that the HEC as regulatory body was proactive, dynamic and viable in resolving the universities financial problems. It was striving for the promotion of education, research and physical development, she said.

Prof Dr Zubair Ahmed Shaikh, president of the Muhammad Ali Jinnah University in Karachi, Dr Hina Kazmi from USAID and othersalsospokeonthe occasion.

Prof Dr Mukhtar Ahmed distributed shields among the presenters and authors.