KARACHI: A meeting was held at Karachi today under the chairmanship of Minister for Education Sindh Syed Sardar Ali Shah.

Director National Curriculum Council Dr Mariam Chughtai and Chief Advisor (Curriculum) Dr. Fouzia Khan were present in the meeting. On this occasion, the Sindh Provincial Education Minister said that we are happy that our stand on curriculum had been recognized by the Federation. The recognition of provinces is a symbol of national unity, which the previous government tried to influence in the name of the Single Nation Curriculum.

Addressing the meeting on this occasion, Shah said that efforts were being made to ensure that any behavior promoting violence or intolerance and extremism in the society would not be made part of the textbooks and such behaviors be discouraged. In this meeting, three initiatives were approved. Firstly, the National Curriculum’s core standards for four subjects – English, Math, Science, Computer Science – were finalized.

Secondly, a partnership between the Sindh Education Ministry and the NCC Secretariat on Teacher Professional Development was approved for public school teachers. Lastly, the meeting also saw the adoption of standards for seven religious minorities and their textbooks – namely Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, Buddhism, and Kalasha.

Experts from the Directorate of Curriculum and Research (DCAR) Government of Sindh remained an active part of the development of standards and later review of the textbooks. Their valuable input helped develop standards and textbooks as per the required standards. Finalized standards for Grades ECE-8 for English, General Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science will be reviewed for adoption in Sindh.

Sindh Education Ministry and NCC Secretariat will partner to implement Teacher Professional Development Project in select districts of Sindh. This will help NCC model similar training for other provinces.

For the first time, a separate curriculum for seven religious minorities: Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Baha’i, Kalasha, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism has been developed with consensus of concerned religious groups. The Government of Sindh will adopt the standards and facilitate the review of textbooks on this curriculum.

These decisions will be formally announced in a joint press briefing in Karachi in the next few days. Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Rana Tanvir Hussain and Minister for Education Sindh Syed Sardar Shah will address the press conference.