KARACHI: `The focus is all on getting good grades and certificates in our country, and not on real education which involves good upbringing, and imparting values and ethics,` said Senator Khushbakht Shujaat. She was speaking during the motivational session on the third and final day of the Pakistan Women Festival on Monday.

`It was this lacl( of `real` education in our system that was bothering me when I first opened an educational institution. I could also see that teaching was more of a pastime for women than a noble profession, the senator continued. `Mothers are never around. Most haven`t a clue about what the cook has packed in their kids` school lunchboxes, what to speak of grooming their young to help develop their characters. But they know to send the kids to elite schools and universities, she added.

`But even the best of grades from these elite schools and universities cannot build character because education is not just in textbooks,` she pointed out. She added that attention at home from parents and extracurricular actives are very important factors in the education of children. `But I see some parents making religious issue out of drawing class as they want their child not to draw pictures while others don`t want them to take music classes. That is how many children have lost their smiles today,` she said.

`What about talent, tastes, hobbies? Such things seem to have lef t our education system, she said. `Please don`t pack up education in a square box. Let it spread like the fragrance of flowers,` she urged.

The senator`s inspirational talk was followed by a panel discussion titled `Women tackling challenges in education`.

Ameena Saiyid, managing director of Oxford University Press, reminded that there are some 60million children of school-going age in Pakistan of which only 40 million attended school.

`While it is sad that there are 20 million children loitering around without any schooling, there are also 20 to 24 million children among the 40 million who do attend government schools where the state of education is dismal,` she said.

`Therefore our literacy rate has variations because there are some who did go to school but cannot go beyond writing their name,` she added.

Ambreena Ahmed, director of Teachers Resource Centre, said that there was a need to raise the professional status of teachers. `Disparities exist between children, teachers, schools, which need to be addressed,` she said.

Nargis Alavi, principal of Habib Public School and director of Habib Education Trust, said that principals should know how to facilitate their teachers in different roles. `We shouldn`t think of policies as if they are cast in stone,` she said. `All teachers are different with different issues. For example, when I was a teacher I would always be late for assembly because I had to drop my daughter to her Montessori school but my principal Zubaida Dossal understood.

You should have flexible policies as a good teacher shouldn`t have to give up teaching because she has had a baby or is caring for an old relative at home,` she said.

Shaha Parel(h, a teacher, also said that educationists have made a habit of not addressing the issues but the symptoms.

She also said that schools should focus on vocational training, too, and that government schoolteachers need to bring in more activities to their classrooms.

`You just don`t hear the laughter of children when passing by a government school classroom,` she said.-Shazia Hasan