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The opening
ceremony of the first Certificate in Education: Educational Leadership
and Management programme for District Officers, Education (Elementary
/Academic and Training), Assistant District Education Officers,
Education, and head teachers of elementary and primary schools of
selected districts of Sindh and Balochistan provinces, was held
at Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED),
Karimabad campus, Karachi. The ceremony was attended by course participants,
as well as senior representatives from the public sector, AKU and
ESRA.
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| The
opening ceremony was attended by course participants, as well
as senior representatives from the public sector, AKU and ESRA. |
Welcoming the
course participants and guests, Dr David Taylor, Acting Provost
of AKU, highlighted AKU-IED's achievements, and said that "the Institute
has helped create a critical mass of professionals who have gone
through their professional development programmes and developed
their knowledge and skills to improve the learning environment.
ESRA is an initiative for building institutional capacity of selected
districts of Sindh and Balochistan provinces, enabling them to improve
the quality of education in schools".
Speaking on
this occasion, Ghulam Ali Shah Pasha, Secretary Education and Literacy
Department, Government of Sindh, expressed his gratitude to ESRA
and AKU-IED for a major initiative towards improving the quality
of education in Sindh and Balochistan. He added that "AKU-IED's
programme for education officials seems to be a right programme
which is being offered at the right time when institutional capacity
building at the district levels has just begun. He hoped that the
programme would expand institutional capacity of the public sector,
and reiterated that unless there were trained teachers the quality
of education in schools would not improve. Mr. Pasha said new initiatives
for the development of madressahs were under way, with "the hope
to develop moderate, liberated and tolerant youth, whereby transparent
registrations scrutinized by various agencies will be conducted".
He assured that science and other disciplines will be taught in
madressah in order to provide opportunities to the madressah graduates
in the job market".
ESRA representative
Zahid Afridi highlighted the major initiatives taken by ESRA, coordinated
by a consortium of international agencies, and said "it endeavours
towards sustainable improvements in the education sector in four
areas: policy planning; professional development of teachers, adult
literacy, and private-public partnership.
Dr. Sadrudin
Pardhan, Acting Director of AKU-IED, shared the historic nature
of the programmes - the first in the series of educational programmes
that AKU-IED hopes will make a big difference in eight districts
of Sindh and Balochistan. He stressed the need to develop a whole
district. "If this experiment is successful it will be significant
for education in Pakistan. The urgency to develop models of sustainability
after the three-year partnership is imperative; hence IED-ESRA will
work towards designing a viable model," he added.
Dr. Muhammad
Memon, Head of Programmes at AKU-IED, said at the conclusion of
the ceremony that the programme would enable the course participants
to develop a spirit of working together for a common purpose. "Education
officers should place high priority on maintaining good will, harmonious
relations, and conflict-free supervision culture. They should work
on 'forward looking' education systems which would offer good quality
education in schools," he suggested.
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