Shafqat Mehmood shares important details about single national curriculum

Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood shared important details about the single national curriculum a few days ago, stating that it will improve educational standards for Pakistanis across the country irrespective of their socio-economic class. 

The minister was speaking on the Dawn News show "News W!se" where he answered questions about the government's single national curriculum, lamenting how an elite class was benefiting from better educational facilities as compared to students of madressahs and public schools who could not avail equal opportunities.

Shafqat Mehmood said that the single national curriculum will improve educational standards across the country, adding that it will eliminate individualism and will aim to bring about equality in the sense that madressah students and students of elite schools and colleges will enjoy the same facilities. 

"First of all, our syllabus can be compared with that of any other syllabus around the world," he said. "We have prepared it keeping in mind modern standards [of education]," added Shafqat Mehmood.

He lamented how a "certain class" in the country thought that only Cambridge and Oxford knew what educational standards were and how they can be perfected.

"This is only the thinking of a particular class here," he said. "So, the standards [education in Pakistan] will rise," added the minister.

When prodded to explain how education standards courtesy the new syllabus will improve, Shafqat said that teachers' training will improve and distance learning will be improved.

"The kids studying in madressahs and those studying in elite schools will have the same educational standards," he said. "And those standards will be higher, not lower."

Earlier, Mehmood had said that the single national curriculum will be implemented across the country from August 2021.

The education ministry had said that under the directives of Federal the Minister for Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mehmood, the new year "would start now in August 2021 due to extension in examination dates to be held in May/June and also prolonged school closures in the academic year of 2020".