LAHORE - Provincial Minister for Education Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman has said that investment in Early Childhood Education is crucial for bright and prosperous future of Punjab. The government is fully aware of the fact that ECE forms the foundation and support to achieve the Chief Minister’s roadmap targets of 100 per cent enrolment and retention of students as well as quality education.
Addressing “National Stakeholders Conference on Up-scaling of Early Childhood Education in Punjab” the minister said the ECE strategy aimed at to achieve the goal of universal primary education by scaling-up the provision of quality ECE in a phased manner in the public sector schools in Punjab. “In the first phase, Directorate of Staff Development has developed ECE strategy and established ECE Resource Centre at DSD and at 33 government colleges for elementary teachers in collaboration with its partners, UNESCO and UNICEF,” he said. The minister further said quality education was the top priority of Punjab government and it was evident from the steps taken in this regard.
He said Punjab government had ensured merit-based recruitment of teachers while qualification for recruitment of teachers had also been enhanced from metric to BA/ BSc with one year professional qualification even for primary teachers. He said incentives of over Rs 1 billion were being given every year to the teachers showing better performance. Moreover, he said, 109,000 teachers had been regularised to ensure job security. Punjab government started primary enrolment campaign to achieve 100 per cent literacy rate in the province, the minister added.
Secretary Schools Aslam Kamboh said there was a need to check dropout ratio to achieve the target of 100 per cent literacy in the province.