Education Solution To Socio-economic Problems Of The Society: Razina Alam Khan

Chairperson for National Commission for Human Development (NCHD), former Senator Razina Alam Khan Tuesday said education is the best remedy to all the problems prevailing in the form of extremism, poverty, inequality and social injustice in the society.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Sep, 2018 ) :Chairperson for National Commission for Human Development (NCHD), former Senator Razina Alam Khan Tuesday said education is the best remedy to all the problems prevailing in the form of extremism, poverty, inequality and social injustice in the society.

"We can only overcome country's socio-economic problems when we have a literate society along with skill development", said the chairperson NCHD in a Senior Management Meeting, held here.

She said that, there was need to devise policies which could address the causes such as social inequality, gender disparities, ethnic and linguistic disadvantages and gaps between geographic areas.

"Providing an equal education opportunity in the remote areas is the basic right of all the citizens of the country", she stressed.

Providing free and compulsory education to the poorest which is engrained with good quality will make sense, while flexible approaches towards learning and multi-grade teaching through Non-formal education in remote areas can cut the cost to the lowest and most effective in the under-developed countries, she observed.

She said, NCHD had adopted a two pronged approach to address the issues of illiteracy in the country, Adult Literacy (for age group 14 and above) and Primary Education both Formal Education (for age group 5-9) and Non-Formal education (for age group 10-14) to achieve 90 per cent literacy rate in the country.

NCHD has made literate to 3.96 million since its inception and providing education to 335,164 children in NCHD 5,949 Feeder Schools in the remote areas to the marginalized group, she briefed.

She added that, NCHD has exercised a number of innovative approaches to reach the marginalized group; we are working in jails with the aim to provide education to the convicts and make them useful citizens. NCHD had approached to the learners in seminaries with reforms and introduced primary education along with religious education in order to bring them in the mainstream of higher education, she said.

Currently, NCHD is successfully working in 100 Seminaries of former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit Baltistan (GB) and Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), she further added.

In collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the commission had launched a model of Non-formal School system where 20 schools are functional in order to provide education to the children of age 10-14 who could neither be admitted to the primary school and nor belongs to adult literacy, she informed.

She said that, we the nation of 207 million, where one fourth or 22.6 million children of 5-9 age groups are still out of school and 40 per cent of adult population are illiterate hampers development and progress of the country.

It is the obligation of government of Pakistan to provide education to all the marginalized groups of the society, she further said.

NCHD had formulated a National Plan of Action (NPA) under Federal Ministry of Education and Technical Training to achieve 90 per cent literacy rate in the country, she added.

This NPA will envisage that the provincial authorities will use the plans to transform policy decisions into action at the ground level, she added.

NCHD established National Training Institute (NTI) to ensure quality education in its feeder schools and adult literacy program along with other projects, she informed.

NTI will build capacity of the professionals working in the field of literacy and non-formal education, she further informed.

NTI will also prepare Accelerated Learning Modules and condensedsyllabus that would provide (OOSC) a second chance or opportunity to take partin educational activities, she maintained.