Khyber Pakhtunkhwa forms new body to reform higher education

The government of Pakistan’s north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has established a Project Management Unit (PMU) in the Higher Education Department with the objective of restructuring and reforming the public sector colleges. The national education policies of 1972, 1979, 1998 and 2009 too had stressed such structural reforms in colleges, universities and other higher educational institutions but produced no fruitful results.

Officials said non-implementation of the policies by government colleges caused confusion at administrative and academic levels and resulted in failure of the effort.

“In the light of the past experience, a separate unit has been established this time which will exclusively work to solve the problems faced by the higher educational institutions,” the officials said. The PMU will make efforts to implement the National Education Policy-2009, said the unit’s director Prof. Mohammad Tariq. He said that they would try to achieve the targets set under the Millennium Development Goals to raise the ratio of higher education in the province from the present five percent to 20 percent.