All matters related to ecology and pollution of environment used to be addressed at federal level till 2010 until 18th constitutional devolved the mandate to provinces with considering the fact whether provinces are ready for taking this responsibility or not. The federal Environmental Protection Act of 1997 was not repealed is still intact. Whereas, provinces have legislated their own environmental protection acts, which has created problem of mandate and policy distortion. This study analyzed the impacts of this amendment in the constitution on the based on six criteria of governance for assessing coherence of educational policies with environmental policies using standard techniques of qualitative data analysis in the provincial policies. The study concluded on the basis of results that environment based education has to be provided at elementary and secondary level for sustainable development. The reason to focus the environment based elementary education is that students at primary level are too young to understand the things clearly although they get concept memorized while the students of secondary and higher secondary level in Pakistan are mentally directed to focus their future field or profession on the basis of which they have to choose some subjects and to leave others in a system thus limiting to the option numbers. The elementary level is the most important age group of children where they can be focused through lessons, class room and school environment, contents of curriculum, practicals, field trips and tours to the national parks, rivers, oceanic coasts, zoo, gardens, thus inspiring them to be a friend of nature in life.
Key words: Education policy, coherence, environment, governance mechanism, 18th Amendment, environment-based education
|
