90% Literacy Rate To Be Achieved By NTI Master Trainers Training: Razina Alam Khan

National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) has set up the first-ever National Training Institute (NTI) to train the master trainers for non-formal education to achieve 90 percent literacy rate across the country

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th May, 2018 ) :National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) has set up the first-ever National Training Institute (NTI) to train the master trainers for non-formal education to achieve 90 percent literacy rate across the country.

Talking to APP, NCHD Chairperson former senator Razina Alam Khan said the NTI has been widely appreciated by educationists, intelligentsia and politicians. She said it was realized that an institution should be developed to provide training in the field of multi-grade teaching and a team of experts should be raised to train the master trainers in this neglected field.

Low literacy rate and 57 million illiterates also demanded a focused approach to create such facility, she added. Razina Alam Khan said the NTI was established with an aim to fulfill training needs of the professionals working in the field of non-formal education.

Existing formal system was adding about one percent literacy rate annually and through the existing pace Pakistan could only achieve 68 percent literacy rate by 2025, she added. She said there were still 57 million adults illiterate and 6.4 million children in the age group of 8 to14 years, who could not be addressed through formal education system.

She emphasized that without non-formal education we could not become a part of literate society. The NTI was devising a National Plan of Action under the ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training in collaboration with all the stakeholders to achieve educational target of Vision 2025, she added.

The NCHD chairperson said the NTI would serve as a laboratory for the stakeholders working in the field of literacy and non-formal education. It would develop manual and modules and conduct trainings to build capacities of literacy and non-formal education personnel, prepare learning resource packs for learners under accelerated learning programmes and conduct research studies to be utilized for highlighting grey areas and improving non-formal education system, she added.

She said the NTI would also devise National Plan of Action for policy makers which would serve as a road map to achieve SDG-4. To a question, she said in under-developing countries it was required to place a system of education that could be success even with minimum budget.

Multi-grade teaching technique, she said, was one such strategy adopted by most of the under-developing countries to cut the cost being invested in hiring teachers for individual grades. She said the NTI had introduced this technique in 5,949 feeder schools and results were fruitful.

The NTI had trained master trainers and had developed a training manual for multi-grade teaching techniques which could be utilized by all the stakeholders working in non-formal education. It is pertinent to mention here that Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Engineer Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman inaugurated the first National Training Institute in Islamabad on May 15, and said the government had taken a number of supportive steps to improve education in the country.

He was of the view that there was still need to work hard in this sector as there more than 40 percent children were out of school in the country. He said there was a well-organized formal system of education for Primary grades, but we were far away from achieving 90 percent literacy rate.

In order to complete the unfinished agenda there was need to utilize and activate non-formal education system, he opined.