AFTER hoisting the national flag at a ceremony held at Lahore Fort to celebrate Independence Day on Sunday, Punjab Chief Minister Parvez Elahi announced free education up to graduation in state-run educational institutes.
This indeed is a welcome step on the part of Provincial Chief Minister who in his previous stint also took several steps for the promotion of education including free education up to matriculation.
Indeed no country can make progress without educating its youth and that too as per the contemporary requirements.
This is the age of science and information technology but it is unfortunate that our public sector schools and colleges are ill equipped and do not have the required faculty to teach these subjects to the students.
There is no dearth of talent in our country but lack of facilities is holding them back. In our neighbourhood, India has been earning hundreds of billions of dollars over the years from the export of IT-related products.
The reason is that they invested heavily in this particular field. However, on the other hand, our IT exports stand around three to four billion dollars.
Hence, we will also suggest Punjab Chief Minister and other provincial Chief Ministers to focus on improving the standard of education in the public sector institutions with special emphasis one quipping the children with modern skills so that they could better compete in the world and contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.
There will be no use of providing free education up to graduation if we continue to teach the same old subjects to our children.
Through this, we will only be producing many graduates but they will be of no use. The priorities need to be set according to the demand of the domestic and international market.
For quality education, the provincial governments should also ensure hiring the teachers on merit and to attract the talented lot to this field, the faculty at the school and college levels must be given handsome salary packages.
