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Education

Right Time and Right decision to improve Education and to progress the Country

Fariyal Mir

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It is never late to make decisions and implement them in a timely. Education is the basis of progress and development. When there is the quality of education in a country then it can avail anything. Indeed a good step is taken by PM Imran Khan for incentivizing education to mainstream 20 million out-of-school children.

(APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday said the government was focused on providing education to all children across the country and giving incentives to prevent dropouts from schools.

Addressing the launch of the Ehsaas Education Stipends program here, the prime minister said as over 20 million children in the country were out of school, efforts were underway to ensure their inclusion in the educational mainstream.

The Ehsaas Education Stipends program aims at providing financial assistance to deserving households for the education of their children at primary, secondary, and higher secondary levels.

Rolled out nationwide in 160 districts, the program has been structured to give a higher amount of stipend to girls as compared to boys.

The prime minister said ensuring education for all was a priority of the government, adding that stipends as incentives would be a step to encourage parents to send their children, particularly girls to schools.

He said an educated woman could contribute more positively towards society and lauded the policy of Ehsaas Stipends program to give higher amounts to girls.

Terming educated human resources a great asset for a nation, he said it was important to provide educational opportunities to both boys and girls.

He dismissed the impression in the western world that Pakistanis did not want to educate their girls.

He recalled that during his visits to different parts of the country, he found no such parents opposing the right of education for their daughters. However, he said the factors including distant schools or unavailability of female teachers could be a reason.

Imran Khan said it was mainly the responsibility of the government to provide facilities of education to all.

He appreciated that by the use of information technology, the stipends would be disbursed transparently after proper checking of fake entries and ghost schools.

The Prime Minister also announced a one-time Ehsaas graduation bonus of Rs. 3,000 to encourage girls to complete primary education. This award is being given to girl students completing Grade 5 from Ehsaas eligible families. The graduation bonus has been designed to encourage girls’ education till secondary level.

PM’ Special Assistant to Social Welfare Dr. Sania Nishtar said under the Ehsaas Education Stipends, the primary school boys would get quarterly stipends of Rs1,500 and girls Rs2,000; secondary school boys would get Rs2,500 and girls Rs3,000; and at the higher secondary level, boys will get Rs3,500 and girls Rs4,000 a quarter.

She said all education stipends would be paid biometrically to mothers on the attainment of 70 percent attendance of their children.

She said as part of the ‘Post-COVID-Ehsaas Strategy’, Ehsaas Education Stipends would empower deserving families to overcome financial barriers in accessing higher education.

Poverty is one of the most persistent barriers to acquiring education. Presently, there are 18.7 million children in the age group 6 to 16 who remain out of school in the country and the fall out of COVID-19 has also accentuated it.

The Education Conditional Cash Transfers are an important pillar of Ehsaas and are included in the Ehsaas framework as Policy #73 ‘Education Conditional Cash Transfers’.

The Education Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) serve the dual purpose of socially assisting vulnerable households and at the same time reduce the number of out-of-school children, which is an important outcome for Pakistan given that there are 18.7 million out-of-school children in the country.

Pakistan has been running an Education Conditional Cash Transfer for primary school-going children called Waseela-e-Taleem since 2012 in selected districts. The program encountered a number of challenges including the high administrative costs charged by NGOs that were administering the program, high error, and fraud due to the program being paper-based, weak compliance monitoring, limited human resources to enroll students into the program, and low stipend amount being given to children.

Also, it was limited to 5th grade and not including secondary education, whereas the latter could be of high impact.

Studies reveal that school drop-out rate increases with age especially for girls in classes 5 to 8, owing to the distance from the school and other associated costs. The previously run education CCT was limited in geographic scope and lacked appropriate federal-provincial partnerships. Also,  payments to beneficiaries were being made through the old BISP payment system which was plagued by many challenges.

On the other hand, Ehsaas Education Stipends challenges is a cost-effective institutional infrastructure developed to implement the program nationwide with reliance on NGOs eliminated.

Because of this, the operational cost has been reduced from 8 to 3 percent. The end-to-end digitization of a number of processes has eliminated the space for abuse in terms of ineligible children being enrolled. The compliance monitors have been hired and a Project Monitoring Unit has been established.

Also, through an MoU with the National Commission on Human Development, additional 1000 staff members have been engaged to enroll students. The stipend amount has been doubled for primary school-going children and has been further increased for girls.

Education

Chinese company MRDL fully supports local youth education in #Balochistan

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Chinese company MRDL fully supports local youth education. MRDL has been fully financing the Saindak Model School in #Balochistan, the most sparsely-populated province in Pakistan, bearing all expenses on textbooks, staff salary and equipment.

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Education

Standard Education would be the key to change our Mindset and System

Fariyal Mir

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There is a standard of everything and it has the power of attraction and fascination. Most of the time people associate the word standard with life “standard life” and each of them define it according to their approaches. Standard life might be the name of having a good job, a well-furnished house, an accelerating car, servants, meet-ups at expensive points, wearing and eating brands, and walking with human brands. Such standard life is the game of money. The other standard can be of education.

The standard of education is a bit different from the standard of life. But it is the key to have a standard lifestyle. We cannot confine the definition of standard education in one line, or paragraph even on a page. I would like to give my opinion about standard education. For me, standard education is to have well-trained facilitators, good infrastructure, equipped labs, learning environment with advanced technology. There should be a facilitator in learning institutes instead of teachers. And for better learning students should be the center, not the teaching. If the learning would be student-centered then they can learn more and with enjoyment. This sort of education system can help us to educate the nation in true sense and can change the mindset and system as well.

The traditional education system cannot work in this era and we cannot compete with the world. In Pakistan, we have an education system but it needs reforms. The private education system meets with the standard whereas the actual education system is far beyond. Every individual cannot effort private education hence it is necessary and urgent to provide one standard system of education. The government aims to bring reforms to the system and it is really good news for the whole nation. Because education is the only solution to all the problems. The education department of Pakistan is working on the curriculum and will implement the One Nation One Curriculum for the nation (Aik Qaum) . It is good to hear that the Balochistan government announces the establishment of 100 middle schools. And I would like to request Balochistan Govt not to just establish schools but with the standard education system.   If you have a standard education system then you have everything.

The children who are in the playgroup today are going to be the leaders of tomorrow. And it is well said that today’s readers are tomorrow’s leaders. So, train the readers to make them the leaders. Follow one curriculum, maintain one standard and be one nation (Aik Qaum).

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Some of the renowned Pakistani-English Poets

Fariyal Mir

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Pakistan is the land of talented and intellectual people. It has given birth to talent in every field. The people of Pakistan are good artists, who can produce art of any kind. They have a grip over musicology, they are the best actors, they produce living pictures, and their architecture is depicted in their construction. These people are high in intellect as they have contributed to the different fields of study. They are the sculptors and producing amazing items from mud. They are no less than anyone in the ground of sports. The brave people are the top-level mountaineers. They are never behind in the field of studies. The spontaneity of their writing skills is outstanding. They do not just write in their language but also have earned a name in multi-languages. And their written pieces are full of knowledge and power.

A good number of Pakistani writers have proved themselves as the best writers in the English language as well. They have disseminated their visionary thoughts to the world through different genres. There are many good poets, novelists, researchers, and essayists. But today we will talk about some of the prominent Pakistani-English poets.

  1. Taufiq Rafat

The influential Taufiq Rafat was born in 1927 and passed away in 1998. He is known to be the father of Pakistani Idioms which he translated into English. He has written Urdu books as well. But his contribution to Pakistani English literature is appreciable. His ‘Collection of poems’ and ‘Arrival of the monsoon’ were published in 1985. He has translated the verses of Bulleh Shah and Qadiryar Puran into the English language.

  • Daud Kamal

The multi-stakeholder Daud Kamal was the child of Abbottabad who lived from 1934 to 1987. He has served the University of Peshawar (English department) as a teacher and chairman for 29 years. He is also known to be the founder of Jinnah College for Women. Above all, he was influenced by modernist English writers like Ezra Pound, W.B Yeats, and T.S Eliot. He has written four English books which are Remote Beginnings, Compass of love and other poems, Recognitions, and Before the Carnations Wither. He has translated some selected Urdu poems of Faiz Ahmad Faiz.

  • Alamgir Hashmi

The multi-talented Alamgir Hashmi was born in 1951 in Lahore. He has received his education from the same city. He is a great living name among the Pakistani English writers. Hashmi is famous for his being a poet but he has been a professor of English and comparative literature, and editor of literary and scholarly journals, a scholar-critic, a broadcaster, a translator, long lapsed lay minstrel, and a weekend canoeist. He has contributed to literary criticism and different other scholarly editions. His most famous poems are; The Oath and Amen. (Philadelphia, Dorrance 1976), America Is a Punjabi Word. (Lahore, Karakorum Range, 1979), An Old Chair. (Bristol, Xenia Press, 1979), My Second in Kentucky (Lahore, Vision Press, 1981), This Time in Lahore (Lahore, Vision Press, 1983), Neither This Time/Nor That Place (Lahore, Vision Press, 1984), Inland and Other Poems (Islamabad, Gulmohar Press, 1984), The Poems of Alamgir Hashmi (Islamabad, National Book Foundation, 1992), Sun and Moon and Other Poems (Islamabad, Indus Books, 1992), A Choice of Hashmi’s Verse (Karachi and New York, Oxford University Press, 1997).

We are grateful to all the intellects who have presented us in front of the world with the help of the English medium.

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