Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi on Thursday stressed the need for making all possible efforts in collaboration with the mosques to educate around 28 million out-of-school children in the country.
The president, chairing a meeting to discuss the role of mosques in promotion of education, said the mosques could be used for promotion of literacy in the country.
Caretaker Minister for Religious Affairs, education ministers of Sindh and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, provincial education secretaries, and representatives of Auqaf and Religious Affairs departments attended the meeting. In the meeting, the president was briefed about the Accelerated Learning Program. It was told that over 70,000 out-of-school children in Islamabad were enrolled in the schools.
The Accelerated Learning Program Model envisages the provision of five-year education within 24 to 30 months and enrollment of the out-of-school children.
The meeting was told that the grown children, who were deprived of education, could benefit from the said program. It was told the said program was flexible, focused and low-cost initiative which could also be implemented at the places provided by the community, religious seminaries and second shifts in schools.
Religious Affairs Minister Aneeq Ahmed said the federal government would extend all possible facilities to educate the out-of-school children. The participants of the meeting agreed to formulate a policy paper to utilise the platform of mosques for the education purpose. The draft of the policy paper would be presented before the federal cabinet for approval.
