Government pledging support for inclusive education of children with
disabilities at Global Education Summit: Shafqat Mahmood
Islamabad (Muhammad Yasir) The Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training, Shafqat Mahmood emphasized on inclusive education for children with
disabilities and said that government of Pakistan will support institutions to provide quality education for children with disabilities.
Shafqat Mahmood will be representing Pakistan at Global Education
Summit on 28 and 29 July where he will support a pledge. The pledge
promotes the education of children and will contribute to the Global
Partnership of Education (GPE).
Shafqat Mahmood will be endorsing ‘Equal World’ campaign of
Sightsavers which is calling on each participating government at the
Summit to commit to children with disabilities benefitting from
quality and accessible education.
In response to the campaign, Shafqat Mahmood has said “Equal World
campaign has raised the significance of equity and inclusion in
education systems for marginalised children, especially children with
disabilities“.
Around the world children with disabilities have faced some of the
worst effects of COVID-19 and subsequent school closures. To counter
this the government of Pakistan plans to increase investment in
inclusive education.
Munazza Gillani, Country Director at Sightsavers Pakistan, said, “This
is a critical moment for the government of Pakistan to make ambitious,
bold and specific commitments on inclusive education and it’s great to
work with them on doing this. These policy commitments will help to
ensure that no child is left behind in learning”.
Sightsavers is currently partnering with the Ministry of Education on
programmes that promote school eye health and the inclusive education
of children with disabilities in mainstream schools. These projects
train teachers on disability inclusion and screen thousands of
children for eye health problems.
Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school
children, around 22.8 million, and it is very likely that large
numbers of these are children with disabilities.
The Summit will provide an opportunity to global community to come
together and support quality education for all children and pledge
their support to transform education systems in their countries and
territories.
