Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Rana Tanvir Hussain said on Monday that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led coalition government had raised the development budget for higher education to Rs110 billion from 91 billion in the budget 2022-23.
Talking to the media at the inauguration of Picture Exhibition at the National Collage of Arts (NCA), he said that previous government of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had cut the higher education budget during the past year, adding that PML-N has always given priority to the education sector.
To a query, he said the PML-N government had raised the higher education budget to Rs 120 billion from mere Rs 34-34 billion during its previous tenure between 2013 and 2018.
The minister expressed the hope that the premier higher education institutions like the NCA would provide quality education to students and play their role in raising educational standards in the country.
Rana Tanvir asked the NCA Vice Chancellor to devise some short term and long term plans for the betterment of varsity, adding that his responsibilities had increased manifold after up-gradation of the college into university. He lauded the VC Prof. Dr. Murtaza Jafri’s efforts for embracing modern technologies and producing quality graduates over the years. The federal minister Education said he had urged the Vice Chancellors Committee meeting at the Higher Education Commission (HEC), Islamabad to focus on quality rather than becoming slaves of commercialism in the higher education. He said that previous government fell a pray to raising numbers of universities instead of maintaining quality in the higher education.
The Minister said the government would award more financial benefits to the universities which produce quality results in future.
The education minister said that the Single National Curriculum (SNC) does not mean lowering academic standards, adding that the SNC guidelines may be revised, adding that the SNC would remain in vogue as a bench mark but the institution would be given freedom in the teaching of subjects.
He, however, said that the subjects like Islamic Studies would be taught as per the recommendations of the SNC. He dispelled the impression that the SNC was being rolled back, adding that the education could not be chained to keep pace with the world.
