NUML SDG Marathon: SDG-4 (Quality Education)

Social Action Project

 

NUML SDG MARATHON

 

SDG - 4: Quality Education

Group Members: Muhammad Abdullah Iqbal & Zahra Shahbaz

Supervised by: Dr. Athar Rashid

Department: G&PP

Semester: BS-4 (PA&G) Morning

Assalam u Alaikum. We were given an assignment to work on Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) as a part of our Social Action Project. The main aim of this assignment was to educate people regarding the SDG's, Pakistan's progress regarding and get to know about their knowledge about it. For which a number of activities were carried out.

Sustainable Development Goals: 

Sustainable development goals are made to help achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. They address the various global challenges we face.

They are a way to fulfill the needs of our current generation without compromising the resources of the next generation The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

The SDGs are unique as they cover issues that affect us all. They reaffirm our international commitment to end poverty, permanently, everywhere. They are ambitious in making sure no one is left behind. More importantly, they involve us all to build a more sustainable, safer, more prosperous planet for all humanity.

The 17 goals include:

• No Poverty
• Zero Hunger                                                                                                                               
• Good Health and Well-being
• Quality Education                                                                                                   
• Gender Equality                                                                                                                    
• Clean Water and Sanitation
• Affordable and Clean Energy
• Decent Work and Economic Growth
• Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
• Reduced Inequality
• Sustainable Cities and Communities
• Responsible Consumption and Production
• Climate Action
• Life Below Water
• Life On Land
• Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Quality Education:

Whatever progress our society has made over the centuries is because of education. Being the foundation stone of society, education brings reforms, helps to progress and paves way for innovation. The importance of quality education cannot be undermined in society.

Quality education focuses on the social, emotional, mental, physical, and cognitive development of each student regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or geographic location. It not only prepares a student for a job but overall develops their personality. It aims at an upbringing where morals and ethics are taught as part of the curriculum to help them live a healthy lifestyle.

 

Progress Made by NUML

 

National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad has worked to implement all goals of sustainable development through different policies. For the implementation of SDG-4, it has

• Academic programs 
• Policy for lifelong learning in connection with UN SDGs
• Lifelong learning measures, 
• Confucius Institute
• Islamabad King Sejong Institute
• International exams center
• Office of Research Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC)
• Business incubation center
• Iranology center
• Yunas Emre Institute and Turkology center
• Capacity building program
• NUML Reading club
• Child rights awareness session
• Webinar on importance of book reading, 
• Student clubs and societies
• Improvement of facilities
• Research equipment and Strengthening IT infrastructure.

Our Activities

Following activities were conducted in Marathon:

1.  Webinar:

We conducted 2 webinars on SDG-4 Quality Education. Students from NUML and its different campuses as well as from other Universities such as COMSATS, FAST, SKANS, AIR, BAHRIA and IST participated in it. In the webinar, we gave a brief introduction on sustainable development and the goals, we mainly focused on quality education, the targets/indicators defined by UN, and the implementation of SDG-4 in Pakistan and the challenges Pakistan faces.

                            

 

                                                                   

With the help of this webinar we spread awareness among 80 people about quality education and its need. Also we took their recommendations and view point regarding all this and the most common point on which everyone agreed was that Pakistan is not on the right track in terms of Quality Education.

2. Campus Drive

During the SDG Marathon we conducted an awareness campaign in which we interacted with the students of our campus as well as students from other campuses of NUML, that were here for the Job fair.

For the interaction we designed pamphlets by the help of which we briefed people and also distributed them among the fellow students.

                                               

                                               

We approached around 55 people, from different departments such as Korean Department, Economics Department, English Department, Department of Mass-communication, Education Department, Psychology department and students in the ESPC Short Courses.

 

From our interactions we found out: 

• That most of the people knew what sustainable development is but only briefly, 
• Very few of them were aware of the goals, their targets and their need. 
• Most of them had a brief knowledge regarding our particular sdg. 

At our part what we did was that we briefed each and everyone of them regarding sustainable development, what it is, what are its goals and gave them detailed info regarding SDG 4 quality education.

3. Interview

We conducted few(10) interviews with the people available in NUML; students and administration.

 

Questions raised in the interview were:

•       What is Sustainable Development?
•         What are SDG’s?
•         Do you know what is quality education?
•         What is quality education according to your perspective?
•         Do you think we as students are being provided with quality education?
•         On a scale of 10, how much do you think NUML is on providing quality education?
•         Do you think Pakistan will be able to achieve the goals within the prescribed time period? If no then why?

 

Response's included:

• Almost 70% knew about Sustainable Development.
• Similarly, 50% had a brief knowledge about what SDG's are.
• All of them nodded their heads when we asked them regarding quality education.
• To our surprise only 30% knew what quality education is, apart from that everybody thought quality education is only related to a good curriculum.
• After briefing them about what is quality education 50% said that Yes, we are being provided with quality education.
• On average when we calculated the response of the people regarding quality education being imparted to students in NUML, the answer came out as 6.5.
• 100% agreed on this that Pakistan wont be able to achieve the goals within the prescribed time period as we lack resources, proper leadership and dedication.

 

 

We had the honor of interviewing The Advisor Student Affairs Mr. Abubakar Bhutta regarding the implementation of SDG-4

 Q- What do you think quality education is?                                                                                             A- Quality education is the overall grooming of students.

 Q-Do you think the university is working on this?                                                                                     A- Yes, the university is working on providing quality education to its students. We have different policies to ensure good quality education for the students.

  Q-On a scale of 1-10 how much do you think NUML is providing quality education?                              A- According to me, it is a 7.

For the purpose of providing quality education, we all need to come together. We are going towards progress. As “Where there is a will there is a way”

 

We also interviewed Dr. Humaira Shahbaz of Persian Department, as the Principle Investigator (PI) of HEC funded National Research Program for Universities (NRPU) under progress at Office of Research Innovation and Commercialization (ORIC) NUML, working on SDG-4 of Quality Education with respect to inclusion of indigenous perspective of women empowerment by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal.

They designed a new curriculum for this as there was an existing gap in the current curriculum of Gender Studies Departments across Pakistan. They have established an organization named as “The School Of Iqbal Studies” (THESIS) committed for research and development in the field of Iqbal studies.

According to her, quality education is “inclusive in its nature”. 

Recommendations

To help achieve quality education we need to follow some steps that could include:

1.   1.     We could make educational reforms
2.     Spread awareness about the importance and need for quality education
3.     Make sure policies are implemented and evaluated
4.     Improve resources for teachers
5.     Focus on personal development and understand the need for constructive feedbacks
6.     Establishment of safe and supportive quality learning environments
7.     Provide an enabling environment
8.     Make education accessible for all - without a gender or disability bias

Conclusion

This NUML SDG Marathon Week has been a source of learning for us regarding SDG’s and it has helped us improve our communication skills regarding interacting with a group of people and briefing them about a particular topic. Due to the time constraint, we learnt how to manage our time efficiently.

One of the problems that we faced during this exercise was that people were not willing to co-operate, they refused to even listen and we had to convince them a lot before getting their approval or had to start over with another group.

Overall, it had been an interesting learning experience.