SWABI: The authorities should introduce reforms in educational institutions and improve the criteria, set for promoting students to next grades or declaring them failed in the annual examinations, say experts.

They stressed the need for focussing on quality of education instead of quantity in the educational institutions across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and tribal belt.

`The annual results will be announced on Monday (today) by all public sector schools. The successful students will be promoted to next grades and those who failed to meet the criteria will spend another year in the same grade,` they told this scribe.

Keeping in view the prevalling competitive environment and modernisation of education trends, authorities should focus on quality of education instead of quantity, said a senior English teacher.

`If we fail, we will face difficulties. There is need for long-term and result-oriented policy to reform the system and enable the students to get quality education,` he said.

Saeedur Rehman, principal of a private school, said that importance of quality education in economic development could not be ruled out. `However, in our country preference is given to quantity. This approach should be replaced with a flawless system,` he said.

The heads of educational institutions said that free hand should be given to the academic staff to determinethe `passing and failure` criteria and incompetent students should never be promoted.

`At present, the academia can only carry out 10 percent failure. It provides a space to some weak students to get promoted to next grade,` said Mushtaq Ahmad, who has recently retired as headmaster.

Mohammad Qamar, another retired headmaster, said that the criterion set by Mutahidda Majlis-i-Ammal (MMA) government in the province was only focussed on quantity instead of quality. `We opposed the criteria but there was no other option,` he added.Another blunder committed by the religious parties` government was that academia was told plainly that they should not conduct detention examinations in the ninth and tenth classes, he added.

`Resultantly, the focus of students on study was decreased,` he said.

However, education minister in MMA government Maulana Fazal said that they had brought result-oriented changes and increased literacy rate. `Free provision of textbooks to students was a big boost. The credit of this policy goes to MMA,` he said.Mohammad Uzair Ali, a district education officer, said that they should know about perfect human capital investment. Contribution of quality education in economic growth was much higher than the quantity, he said, adding without improving education standard they would lag behind in all fields.

He said that authorities should improve quality of education besides making it easy for more people including the poor, who were in majority in the society.

`If we succeed, it will have a real impact on the economic growth not only in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but in the entire country,` Mr Ali said.