Experts emphasizes on community engagement and role of educational institutions

Karachi: A webinar session on the ‘The scope of education technology in the education sector of Pakistan’ was organized by the SABAQ Learning Foundation; the webinar was moderated by Avinash Advani (SABAQ Representative & Researcher).

Maheen Usmani: An award-winning journalist and author of The Mercurial Mr Bhutto and Other Short Stories shared her experience that there should reform in education sector and also it is pre-requisite to provide good culture for the students where parents can play as a role model.

Community engagement is essential because schools are vital to their teachers and communities, making it significant to inspire parents and community members to become partners in promoting school success. She added. She also insisted that we need advocacy solution and good culture within the classroom whereas teachers’ helps students to ask better questions and make sure the accessibility of education by hiring right people at the right job.

Dr. Kamran Akbar Soomro he has been serving as assistant professor at SZABIST Karachi, he discussed the challenges and solutions that there should be clear directions and Community development is the most important factor in order to improve the quality of education and achieve students learning outcomes. He also suggested that public private partnership can play significant role. He further said that we need to promote education through technology in the remote areas because there are many network issues over there and after COVID pandemic, the education has highly effected and it is time to have an emergency plan to overcome such issues.

Mehboob Ali Naich – USAID Representative reassured that the School Education Sector Plan (2019-2024) will be implemented and further he discussed that there are some improvements gradually in the education Sindh. Also he informed that SMC will be activated and our female participants will take lead in order to improve the enrollment of girls as well. Consequently, he said that we need to hire right people at the right job and around 7-8 million students are out of school at this time and need to improve our drop out ratio and USAID along-with stakeholders have been working on it.

SABAQ has also provided the platform to Champions of Change who has been working on the ground and facing some issues. Abdul Wahid (IBA-HM Badin) has discussed about the merit and demerit and allocation of resources. Taj Muhammad (IBA-HM Tando Muhammad Khan) discussed about the education and technology and how did they improve their education. Kiran Bibi (IBA-HM Tando Muhammad Khan) discussed about girls education and she has shared her experience that recently one of the parents of girl were attempted to get leaving certificate however she convenience them.

At the end of the webinar session, the closing remarks were given by all speakers and concluded with few points for instance Allocation of Human Resources, Dignity of honors, the way of organization and planning, Community development, career counselling and Result Oriented.