In the name of Allah, The most Beneficent and Merciful

Since independence our country as well as our community has advanced economically, socially and globally but still we are way behind and woefully out of pace with the international progress. We have transited through the dark period when the majority of people were indifferent towards educating their children. These days everyone desires to get his/her children educated. Numerous numbers of government and private schools have been established to cater to the growing need. However, the education one gets in these schools, specifically in rural areas, is way more different in quality aspects. Majority of these schools fail to deliver affordable quality education and as a result children attending such schools are still short of quality education which has the power to give them the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reach their full potential towards employability which in turn acts as a bulwark against poverty and exploitation.

Poor quality of education is not only limited to schools but even institutes offering professional and higher education are also lacking in quality of education and training and as a result students graduating out of such institutes don’t have skills good enough to make them employable.

In this scenario it becomes more important for us to adopt measures to ensure that our children get quality and employability driven education so that with time they are not left behind in today's highly competitive world.

The need of the hour is that all stakeholders in the education sector should work on a blueprint to adopt the following measures to facilitate our students in getting employability driven quality education.

• Promote concept based learning by minimizing rote learning.

• Enhance numerical and English language skills of our children right from the beginner’s level.

• Integrate communication skills, personality and computer literacy development programs as part of curriculum starting from primary classes onwards.

• Professional career counselling of the students from grade seven onwards so that students are able to choose their career paths based on their aptitude and interest with due clarity and confidence.

• Promote, educate and motivate students to get enrolled in vocational courses from accredited ITI’s and polytechnics instead of seeking admissions in substandard colleges/ institutes and in substandard courses.

• Students with merit and aptitude are not quite confident of their capability and their potential hence they need to be counselled to prepare to pursue accredited futuristic courses from premiere institutes, universities. (Central Universities, IIM’s, IISc’s, NIFT, NID, NDA, IMA, TISS etc. Government medical schools and reputed Research Centers don’t have a visible presence of our students.

We at TMT are trying to work and incorporate these measures in our schools and programs, though we have progressed successfully to a certain level but still we have lot more to achieve towards quality.

Its an age-old dictum that “Taaleem” (education) goes hand in hand with “Tarbiyat” (upbringing or grooming). Hence, we need to give equal importance to proper upbringing of our children along with quality education.

Our society is witnessing deterioration in the quality of upbringing and grooming (Tarbiyat) of our children. We usually attribute this serious problem to the busy life of the parents- as they tend to spend less or hardly any time with their children- and growing misuse of social media and changing family structure from joint family to nuclear family.

My personal experience which adds to the list is that parents are evading their prime responsibility by passing it on to the school and its teachers, whereas it’s a joint responsibility in which parents play a major role.

Irrespective of its root causes, parents need to work seriously towards this equally important issue of much needed immaculate upbringings of our children by participating proactively to inculcate high moral, ethical, human and spiritual values in our children so that they may develop character and confidence to evolve into a good human being and socially productive and responsible citizen.

Mothers have always played a pivotal role in shaping the future of our children and leaving behind a generation which outshines their predecessor. Hence, we at TMT have also preferred to partner with mothers in all our programs. To strengthen the element of “Tarbiyat” of children we have launched a project called “Tarbiyat”. The objective of the program is to educate, train and motivate mothers towards holistic upbringing of their children. Two years of Covid has pushed the program onto the back burner. We have worked out to launch a pilot project of 'Tarbiyat' again from the new session. Initially we shall be working with mothers from underprivileged families whose children are enrolled in our free education program. Team members visit homes to observe and evaluate the living condition / environment and interact with mothers on one-to-one basis as part of their need assessment exercise. Based on the need analysis they choose topics and organise orientation lectures for these mothers in manageable groups using audio-video aids.

There is no free lunch – successes are achieved by making sacrifices, determination and hard work in the right direction. Preparing a generation of higher calibre is a herculean task, especially for mothers who never got an opportunity to attend schools. But I have a strong conviction that the investment we put jointly into our children and sacrifices we make today by providing “Taaleem with Tarbiyat” will help them to achieve greater heights and create a brighter future irrespective of their socio-economic status.

Before I conclude, I, also, wish to use this opportunity to convey my gratitude to all our well wishers, supporters, donors and team members for taking TMT and its projects from one level to another. Whatever has been accomplished is due to grace of The All Merciful and support of our stakeholders but still , we have miles to go ,and considerable qualitative and quantitative scaling needs to be achieved by TMT team towards empowering the underprivileged by providing them means for quality education, healthcare and general wellbeing.

Kind regards and best wishes
Najmul Hasan Rizvi