President of Pakistan Dr. Arif Alvi recently visited Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) where he urged for women’s participation in the workforce in Industries by ensuring women friendly conducive and secure environment as well as maintaining a disabled quota for differently-abled persons. He also emphasized that the academia-industry linkage be strengthened.
Well, President has rightly pointed out much-needed academia-industry linkages to be strengthened and for that, we need to design and develop competency-based curricula. Such curricula must be designed and developed with the consensus of industry persons as well as relevant expert teachers and trainers so that fresh graduates may be hired by relevant industries soon after graduation. The irony of our education system is that what is taught in academic institutions is not applied in industries where graduates are employed.
We need to update our old curricula and examination process and should come out of the pass-and-fail concept of examination instead should introduce a competency-based curricula methodology where assessment is made as highly competent, competent, and not that competent which means pupils need more hard work and time to be either highly competent or competent but not incompetent.
FAISAL ANSAR,
Karachi.