Higher Education Commission to get over Rs90b, says state minister

Islamabad: Almost least Rs91 billion will be given to Higher Education Commission (HEC) this year for promoting research activities as well as higher education in Pakistan.

The State Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Balighur Rehman told the National Assembly regarding this amount during answering the several questions about this matter on Wednesday.

The minister while responding to the different supplementary questions said that the government had provided Rs42 billion to the commission last year, in addition to Rs41 billion the year before.

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Rehman said that the Higher Education Commission had started capacity-building programmes for staff of the universities.

The courses arranged by the commission are of international standard, he added.

The minister said the HEC periodically developed, reviewed, and prescribed uniform curricula for undergraduate and graduate programmes in universities across Pakistan.

He said those curricula were developed through the National Curriculum Review Committees (NCRC) comprising representatives from universities, professional councils, civil society, and other important stakeholders.

Answering a question, the minister said that up till now curricula for 120 disciplines had been developed apart from carrying out revisions of 308 curricula.

The curriculum is reviewed and revised after every three years, he added.

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The minister furthermore said that almost 12,304 non-formal Basic Education Community Schools (BECS) were functioning crosswise Pakistan.

Giving the breakup, he said approximately 5,687 BECS were establish in Punjab, 1,674 in Sindh, 1,399 in KhyberPakhtunkhwa (KPK), 607 in Balochistan, 1,061 in the Fata, 1,425 in Gilgit-Baltistan, 203 in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir while 248 in the federal capital.

Nonetheless, some 131 BECS in the Fata were temporarily closed because of the military operation in south and North Waziristan agencies.