Education, skill development top priority of PTI govt: minister

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Education and professional Training Shafqat Mahmood has said that education and skill development is the top priority of the incumbent government.   

While addressing a meeting at National Vocational and Technical Training Commission (NAVTTC) headquarters, Shafqat Mahmood said Pakistan’s future lies in providing marketable skills to youth and enable them to earn respectable livelihood.

According to a press release issued from the ministry, Mahmood said they will introduce such systems on the style of successful models of developed countries, which will not only improve the quality of education but also enhance the standards and provision of skills.

“We will soon make vocational education a part of traditional education in the schools so that those children who cannot continue education can be attracted to getting skills” he said.

For this purpose such trades would be identified which could be introduced at the school level. The minister emphasized on the importance of providing international-level skills to Pakistani youth so that they are in a better position to secure jobs abroad, reads the statement.

The minister directed NAVTTC to prepare up-to-date databank of the country’s TVET sector. “National skills university would be active soon where our focus would be to prepare world class master trainers”, he said.

To bring informally trained workforce into the mainstream economy under the system of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is among the main objectives of NAVTTC, said Shafqat Mahmood.

The federal minister said that the target of the PTI’s government is that all the youth who enter the job market are equipped with marketable skills.

Recommendations of National Task Force on Education would be finalized soon, he said and added that they will set up an Inter-provincial Skill Forum which will include all the provincial TEVTAs.