Daily Times

The post graduate certificate in education qualification was launched at Shamadan Hall, Serena Hotel in the presence of the iQualify UK and International Centre of Excellence (ICE) Management from Pakistan and the UK Office. The purpose, as evinced by the theme of the event ‘Transforming Teachers To Academic Leaders’ was to empower the existing teachers with the highly demanded skillsets.

“PGCert in Education is a step towards acquiring the right leadership skills in the right environment and in the right direction,” said Ms Sumbal Manzoor, Head of Centre, ICE Pakistan and the moderator of the panel. “The comprehensively designed programme targets the essential skillset that the education industry depends on to address higher education and its shortfalls in teaching – with specific reference to Higher education landscape in Pakistan.”

The event also included a panel discussion with the respected members of the education sector; namely, Dr Shaheen Sardar Ali (Rector NAHE), Dr Paul Dudley (Dean iQualify UK), Dr Nishat Riaz (Director Education – British Council) and Dr Muhammad Ali Saeed (Principal Bahria University – Management Sciences), who discussed the challenges of education sector and educationists at length.

Dr Shaheen Sardar placed special emphasis on the quality of education and stated that it all depended on the training we receive from crib to the classrooms of universities and that the society’s challenges in individual development were the real problem of the country’s current state of the education system. She also focused on the point that teaching is an art and a science in itself and all educators must be in a constant process of personal development through self-reflection and hard work to keep up with the changing world.

She pointed out that the pandemic had catapulted academia into training to teach online and this acted as an equaliser so we must keep in mind how we can always discipline ourselves. Such training programmes, she believes, are the need of the hour that NAHE is primarily focused on and this is what will align capacity with the delivery in classrooms. Building on her views, Dr Paul Dudley reiterated the fact that teaching must always be done with passion.