KARACHI – The Sindh government has decided to introduce music and art as elective subjects in public schools across the province.
Sindh Education Minister Syed Sadar Ali Shah said on Thursday that music and art classes would be introduced in the province to “counter extremist tendencies.”
“We have decided to hire music and fine art teachers to nourish the hidden talent of students in these fields and also counter extremist inclinations and tendencies in society,” Shah said, adding that the provincial finance department had been asked to make the recruitments part of proposals for the fiscal budget 2022-23, which is to be passed this month.
“Once the budget is passed, we will recruit 1,500 music and fine art teachers through a third-party on pure merit,” Shah said, outlining that known institutions of music and the fine arts like the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) and Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, would be involved in the selection of teachers on merit.
“This initiative” Shah said,” will not only create conducive environment in the schools, help us build diversity, rationalism, pluralism, tolerance, and modern thinking in our society but will also provide employment to jobless graduates of different institutes of music and art.”
Shah said 1,500 music and art teachers would initially be hired to teach at some 750 high schools in major cities of the province as part of a pilot program, which would be extended to over 3,000 more schools gradually.
Pakistan right now has the world’s second highest number of out-of-school children with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 not attending school, representing 44 per cent of the total population in this age group.
There are around 300,000 schools in the country, while the education budget hovers at less than three percent of GDP. But experts have long said the government can’t meet all the education needs and part of the problem lies in the quality of teaching rather than just dearth of money.
