Education minister of Sindh announced that the government has decided to make music and art classes electives in public schools throughout the southern province.
Pakistan currently has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children, with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5 to 16 not attending school, accounting for 44% of the total population in this age group. There are approximately 300,000 schools in the country, and the education budget is less than 3% of GDP.
Syed Sadar Ali Shah, Education Minister of Sindh, said music and art classes would be introduced in the impoverished 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,” Syed Sadar Ali Shah told, furthermore, he added 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 the 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.
Education Minister of Sindh said “This initiative, “will not only help us build diversity, rationalism, pluralism, tolerance, and modern thinking in our society, but it will also employ jobless graduates from various institutes of music and art.”
Shah stated that 1,500 music and art teachers would be hired to teach at 750 high schools in the province’s major cities as part of a pilot program that would be gradually expanded to over 3,000 more schools.
