Baligh: Over 5 million destitute children started getting education

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Education and Professional Training, Muhammad Baligh-ur-Rahman has said around five million children had been enrolled in last five years to bring back all those children who left schools mainly due to financial constraints.
“The school expenses of these out-of-school children from class one to 12th have been bearing purely the government with the objective of leaving not a single child unattended just because of accessibility barriers,” the minister said while talking to APP on Sunday.
He said, “Our effort was highly acknowledged by the international educational organizations and they were happy on the programme under which a record number of children in history of Pakistan have been admitted in schools during short span of time.”
The government, he said was pumping more and more funds in the education sector to increase the literacy rate and for the provision of quality education.
He added the Federal and Provincial governments had spent more than Rs 4,200 billion during last five years for promotion of education sector while the budget for higher education sector had also been increased from Rs 40 billion to 107 billion during last five years.
He said that the federal government had increased its budgetary allocation for the educational sector from Rs 500 billion to Rs 900 billion during last five years and the number was increasing every year, he remarked.
He particularly mentioned that according to QS World University Ranking, around ten Pakistani universities have been placed in top 300 universities of Asia, adding that this number is increasing annually.
The Minister said currently Pakistan has only 26 percent PhD’s while it needs further 40 percent under Vision-2025 and the target would be gained through Pak-US Knowledge Corridor.
He emphasized the Quran education in schools, and said that as a pilot project the compulsory Quran education has been implemented in only few public sector schools of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), while it would be made compulsory in all schools by next years.
The federal government has launched a programme under which the teachers and heads of the schools across the country were being provided professional teaching skills and training, which produced positive results, he added.