Islamabad - Federal Minister for Education Baligh-ur-Rehman said on Wednesday that despite a colossal increase in the budget for education, several loopholes still exist in the education system.

The Minster was addressing the ground breaking ceremony of the new campus for the Centre for Advanced Studies in engineering here at sector B- 17.

The minister said that there are several loopholes in the country’s education system; however, the increase in annual budget for education, from Rs 550 billion to Rs 850 billion was one of the many positive initiatives taken by the ruling party.  He said that the number of out of school children decreased significantly from 26 million to 22.6 million during 2013-17.

 “Establishment of such institutes would be a big opportunity for the youngsters to enhance their capabilities at the maximum level”, he added. He directed the CASE administration that the quality of education should not be compromised at any cost. The minister further said that a large number of students were benefitting from public-private partnership programs being run in the country very successfully.  

Talking about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and many other mega projects, he said “I know many projects could not be completed overnight in my party’s tenure as some of them are set to complete by 2030.

However, they would be highly beneficial for the country”. 

“The social action projects are student-led initiatives that tackle issues related to local communities, ranging from environmental actions to issues of social justice and gender abuse. These projects help develop students’ leadership and team building skills and also enhances their understanding of local issues making them committed to change”, he recalled.

Earlier there were 26 percent faculty members in universities that were PhDs which has now increased to 40 percent and this percentage should continue to increase as developed countries have 100 percent ratio of PhD faculty members in their universities, he added.   

An official from CASE briefed participants about the ceremony; he said that the institute has produced over 50 PhDs and over 1850 graduates and others while it offered 10 percent merit based scholarship in each academic program.

“The institute is currently focusing on cyber security systems due to which it has received almost 12 awards for best performance in the Information Technology sector”, he claimed.