Category Archives: Education

Shabnam Baloch

The most critical mistake of recent times is to take peace for granted. No formal action is taken to institutionalise peace in order to prevent wars, conflicts, violence and extremism. Education perhaps can be the most powerful tool to inculcate deeper values of peace, harmony and tolerance for diversity and differences in social fabric. Continue reading →

By: Atle Hetland

It is criminal negligence that Pakistan does not provide education for all,” said Senator S.M. Zafar, the Chancellor of Hamdard University, at this year’s graduation ceremony in Islamabad on Tuesday. He said he was not proud of all the changes made to the Constitution of Pakistan, prepared by a committee he had been a member of. But he said that he was, indeed, proud of having formulated the text that was eventually accepted by Parliament, stating that education shall be free and compulsory from the age of five to sixteen for all children.
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By: Inayatullah

Earlier this month, an important regional seminar was held in Lahore to address issues of equity and quality in school education. It was organised by ITA, Idara-e-Taleem-o-Agahi and South Asia Forum for Education Development in collaboration with Education Testing Service USA, DFID, UKAID and Open Society Foundation as a follow-up of the Salzburg meetings.
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Zubeida Mustafa

IN today’s age “of the one per cent, for the one per cent, and by the one per cent” (to quote Joseph Stiglitz) to seek equality — especially in education — amounts to looking for utopia.
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By Yaqoob Khan Bangash

The Holocaust and the horrors of the Second World War brought to the fore an important discussion about the inherent rights of humans. Grounded in Natural Law theory, it was argued that humans had certain fundamental rights which were inalienable and had to be safeguarded and enforced. Continue reading →

S T K Naim

If Pakistan is to emerge from the shackles of foreign debt, poverty and hunger, it needs to unleash the tremendous creative talents of its youth. Our real wealth lies concealed in the 90 million young people below the age of 19 that constitute some 54 percent of our population. This is s huge demographic advantage if we can tap into this vast reservoir of creativity and employ it to migrate from our present low-value-added agricultural economy to a high-value-added knowledge economy.
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By Dr Pervez Tahir

Dr Adil Najam, the vice chancellor of LUMS has raised an important issue on the quality of higher education in an interview with this newspaper “Quality education to drive Pakistan forward: LUMS VC” (March 28). He was, however, less convincing in contending that the issue of plagiarism was being addressed by the Higher Education Commission (HEC). Continue reading →

By: Adam Thomson

In 1947, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah said: “Education is a matter of life or death for Pakistan. The world is progressing so rapidly that without the requisite advance in education, not only shall we be left behind others but we may be wiped out altogether.” And yet, if the global knowledge economy were a school and Pakistan its student, Pakistan would currently get a failing grade.
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Faisal Abbas

National and international estimates reveal that poverty in the rural areas of Pakistan is massive. This implies that any policy that focuses on poverty alleviation must have a strong focus on alleviating (rural) poverty. Education is one element for long term sustainable development and reducing poverty and advancing the living standards of the rural masses.
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By Dr Tariq Rahman

The Higher Education Commission has recently announced the rankings of the countries’ higher education institutions (HEIs) again. Ranking of universities started in the last quarter of the last century. Among the most famous are the pioneering efforts of the Shanghai-based Jiao Tong University which created the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Continue reading →