ISLAMABAD - The government has taken steps to set up National Curriculum Council to ensure uniform syllabi, stated Minister of State for Education and Training, Muhammad Baligh ur Rehman here on Wednesday.
He pointed out that the uniformity of educational curricula was utmost necessary for promoting national outlook and achieving national goals.
Federal Minister of State for Education and Training expressed these views while addressing the inaugural session of "NUML International Conference on Quality Higher Education 2014" at National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad.
Baligh ur Rehman said with the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the national curriculum had been devolved but with consensus of all the four provinces, Azad Jummu Kashmir and FATA, it had been decided to revive the National Curriculum Council and this will ensure the development of a uniformed national syllabi for primary, secondary, tertiary and higher education levels.
He said despite all restraints and cuts in the annual budget of different sectors, govt didn't reduce or cut the education budget and it had planned to increase the education budget from 2 percent to 4 percent of the total GDP. He said that the present govt had also increased the budget of Higher Education Commission (HEC) from Rs 39 billion to Rs 58 billion to facilitate the higher education in the country. Speaking at the occasion, Rector NUML Maj Gen (R) Masood Hasan said universities are the citadel of knowledge where deliberations are made, where ideas take place, where societies are given solutions to challenges. Ours is one of the attempts to bring researchers together on quality aspect of education in all the areas of interest including curriculum, methodology, evaluation, professionalism and humanism. He said that in order to seek a broad vision about the future of education, we would have to establish communication linkages amongst researchers engaged in their pursuit of for attaining ever higher quality.
Peter Brennan, Minister Counselor for Public Affairs US Embassy, while speaking on the occasion, felicitated NUML for providing an opportunity to national and international scholars for sharing their deliberations and experience on education saying, what you need is for the quality education is certain amount of focus and linkage or connection with the work force. NUML is doing a great job in the same direction at the occasion.
Registrar Saeed Akhtar Malik, Head of Education Department Dr Brig (R) Allah Baksh, and Dr Maria Staton from Ball State University also spoke at the occasion.
Later, the different academic sessions on Development and Challenges in Higher Education, Developments and Challenges in Higher Education, Quality Management in Academic Practices held.