Access to school made easy for poor: Minister
islamabad — Huge funds are being invested in education sector for the provision of quality education and for increasing rate of literacy, Minister for Education and Professional Training, Engineer Muhammad Balighur Rahman has said.
Talking to APP in Islamabad, he said the government has spent more than Rs4,200 billion for promotion of education sector while budget for higher education sector has also been increased from Rs40 to Rs107 billion during last five years.
The minister said around five million children have been enrolled during the last five years to bringing back all those who left schools mainly due to financial constraints. This effort was acknowledged by the international educational organisations. To a question, he said Pakistan has hired the services of an international institution TIMS for assessment of education sector in the country, which will start its work by next year with cooperation of national institutions
“The school expenses of these out-of-school children from class one to 12th have been born by the government with the objective of leaving not a single child unattended just because of accessibility barriers, the minister said.
He said: “Our efforts were highly acknowledged by the international educational organisations and they were happy on the programme under which a record number of children in history of Pakistan have been admitted in schools during short span of time.” The government, he said was pumping more and more funds in the education sector to increase the literacy rate.
Lauding the prime minister laptop scheme, the minister informed that Pakistan has become among the top five countries across the world which is providing E-Learning education to students. He said according to QS World University Ranking, around 10 Pakistani universities have been placed in the top 300 universities of Asia, adding that this number is increasing annually. He said currently Pakistan has only 26 per cent PhD’s while it needs 40 per cent under Vision-2025 .