'Education emergency need of the hour'
She was speaking at the inaugural meeting of Education Innovation Alliance organised by Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) in collaboration with Developyst and Ilm Ideas - the two civil society organisations. The Education Innovation Alliance is a group of visionaries coming together to transform the education landscape in Pakistan.Begum Shahnaz Wazir Ali said that Pakistan has the second highest number of children who do not go to school. To be very precise, she said, nearly 25 per cent of the 19.75 million children in Pakistan aged 5 to 9 are out of school in the same vein, she said that almost two-third of the poorest girls in Pakistan have never been to school.
Former Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan Shahid Kardar said there is a need to challenge the status quo in education sector. Ahmad Jamal, Senior Group Head PPAF, stressed the need to reach out individuals and institutions across the country, including the poor, to identify scalable and innovative solutions that provide access to quality education.
Rashid Khan, chairman of a leading telecom, identified that innovation and a desire for change is evident amongst Pakistan’s growing middle class, youth and members of civil society and this needed to be harnessed in a systematic way.
The participants developed recommendations for finding and inspiring innovators in education. They pledged to advocate with the public and private sector to build an enabling environment for innovation. They agreed to help develop connections of people and ideas, to allow innovative ideas to interact and feed off each other to create a multiplier effect. They pledged to support and mentor innovators in education as the scale of the education problem will require out of the box thinking and collaboration across segments of society.
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