TOBA TEK SINGH: The Punjab government will introduce a new group of subjects of technology at matriculation level (secondary school certificate-SSC) along with the science and arts from next March in order to produce skilled youth, says Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat.

Addressing the business community at Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Thursday, he said the new technology group would cover four subjects including fashion & textile designing, nursing, IT & AI, and agriculture technology to meet the emerging needs of the modern age.

He said public sector schools are established generally on four acres of land while its teachers get approximately Rs100,000 salary.

`On the other hand, the privateschools are housed in four-marla buildings but their teachers give best results with minimum salary`, he said and added that there was no system of accountability in the prevailing education system.

`The public sector teachers get salary for 30 years, followed by pension for another 30 years while their family also continue to enjoy this benefit,` he added.

He said it is ironic that in this modern age 25,000 teachers are working who were recruited on the basis of matriculation. About the promotion of technology, he said that the latest and updated syllabus is being finalised by using most relevant modules of IT.

He said 13,000 schools would be run on public-private partnership mode while a successful business model has also been prepared for this purpose.

He said out of these schools 20 per cent would be offered to educatedyouth who have the ability to run these schools. Another 20pc would be given to the individuals having professional experience in this field while 30pc would be allocated for active NGOs and remaining 30pc would be doled out under publicprivate partnership mode.

He said globally there is a huge demand for qualified nurses.

`Only New York needs 225,000 nurses and we would provide nursing graduates who could earn $3,000 per month after completing a six-month training in America`, he said and added there was huge demand of pharmacists and data analysts and we could train our youth and export them to the global markets so that they could earn respectable livelihood in addition to earning much-needed foreign exchange for the country.

He said the government was paying a fee of Rs650 for each student enrolled in schools run under public-private partnership and now this fee has been increased to Rs1,200 while in case of doubling the enrolment and improving the infrastructure, they could get another Rs300.

He said the FCCI president would be made an exofficio member of the syndicate of all public sector universities in Faisalabad.

President FCCI Rehan Naseem Bharara announced plans to adopt a school which would be developed as a model school.

Former FCCI president Javed Iqbal said the education minister visited here for the first time during the 27-year history of the chamber and hoped it would strengthen relations between education and industry.