LAHORE: Participants in a conference on `Right to education without discrimination` said on Thursday redeeming education system from religious discrimination was a must for quality education in the country.

The Centre for Social Justice with the Centre for Governance and Policy of the Information Technology University organised the conference.

Panelists said the proposed Education Policy 2017 relied on articles 31 and 25-A (Islamicway of life, right to free and compulsory education) of the constitution but it ignored the constitutional guar antees under articles 20, 22 and 36 about religious freedom, safeguards against discrimination in educational institutions with respect to religion and protection of rights of minorities.

The education policy 2009 not only violates articles 20, 22 and 25 of the constitution, but also contravenes international human rights law (articles 14 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 13 (1 and 3) of the International Covenant on Economic, Socialand Cultural Rights, and Article 18 (4) of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

Participants found discrimination in policies on the basis of religion, like the minority students could opt for ethics, as alternative to Islamic studies.

They said other subjects, including social studies, history and languages, had carried 30 to 40 percent of the topics about the majority religion.

They said that the textbooks were carrying biases and hate materials against minority religions and it led to the killing of a minority student Sharoon Masih in Vehari in 2017 by fel-low students.

On the other hand, a hafiz-eQuran was eligible for extra marks for admission to professional colleges and jobs and no such provision available for the minorities.

They said federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments had made Holy Quran`s teaching compulsory for students in 2017 while minority could not study their f aith.

The panelists said the religious minorities had low national average in literacy as Christian 11 percent and Hindus 20 under population census 1998.

They urged the federal andprovincial governments to promote religious tolerance.

They said the school and college curriculum and education policy draft 2017 should be reviewed and discriminatory things about other religions should be excluded from textbooks.

They said the government should introduce quota for admissions for the minority students in schools, colleges, universities and technical training institutes as five percent in job.

Panelists included Dr Yaqoob Bangash, Dr Tahir Kamran, Dr Allah Baksh Malik and Peter Jacob.