Islamabad : Federal Minister for Education, Professional Training, National Heritage and Culture Shafqat Mahmood on Thursday inaugurated the Pakistan Institute of Education (PIE), which will serve for Education data collection, consolidation, dissemination, Education assessment, basic and applied research in education sector.
The minister said education sector in Pakistan faced severe challenges related to educational policy making including Incomplete Data Coverage, Weak Institutional Setting, Lack of Data Quality Standards, Weak Coordination, SDG-4 Indicators, Data gaps related to learning losses and learning poverty, Lack of linkages between research and policy formulation and implementation and Absence of competitive research regime.
“Three years back, I envisioned an institute with a clear mandate to guide policy analysis and resource allocations through data assessment, research and analysis to solve the issue of gap in federal level mandate to undertake a country level education analysis and provide guidance on lagging areas.
“Working procedure in government’s set up is more complicated as compare to private sector for instance a recruitment process in private sector takes a week while the same process in government would take six months,” he said.
The minister said a dream had been realised and he wanted the PIE to become the premier institution of the country in education sector.
He advised the senior officers of the ministry not to stop here but further move forward with same zeal and zest. Secretary education Naheed Durrani said, “Where we are standing now, this all is because of the guidance and directions of Federal Minister Shafqat Mahmood.” She said the Pakistan Institute of Education would fulfill the requirements of Education sector and inte-grate the provinces with federation through the modern data management.
