Impact of ‘Open Data’ and its Effectiveness forPakistan Social Issues: Learning fromthe UK Experience

Developmental projects are essential ingredients of prosperity and well-being. Every nation has to ensure that her people are living in a perfect and safe sociopolitical environment. However, it varies from region to region and place to place. UK as a country is a big economy which is capable of giving its people the type of security they need. For this purpose, various types of strategies have been emphasized which enable the government to look for the benefit of its people. Open data system is one of these important developments which have been initiated by the UK government to provide huge access to databases. It improves their learning and knowledge, and gives the opportunity to think ‘out of box’. It also enables people to polish their learning skills and take things out of their resources and utilize them fully. Although, there is some compulsion on the use of private data sources, yet it is necessary to know that not all data are confidential. The research looks into the pros and cons of using open data systems and to assess its impacts on the social and political development in UK. The use of open data system is not only beneficial for the people to perform their daily life tasks, it is important to evade corruption and foster great accountability of national institutions. So, there remains feeble chance of witnessing corruption in the society that could cause chaos in the nation. The use of open data systems is important for boosting up innovation and creativity for a developing country like Pakistan. Open data system has been seen playing a big part in establishing a trend of innovative growth pushed by the availability of these resources. The influence and impact of ‘Open Data’ has largely been observed during the recent Coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) where the government has utilized the data to tackle the disease in Pakistan.

Including the Excluded: A Case Study of an Inclusive Classroom in an Inclusive Education School in Karachi, Pakistan

The purpose of inclusive education is to value children with special needs, so that they can participate equally in all educational activities in a general school along with their peers without discrimination. There is a worldwide movement towards establishing inclusive educational settings for children who have not as yet received due attention from governments and the private sector. The Salamanca Conference (1994) focused on education of the child with special education needs. In this gathering, all governments of the world were to ensure the basic education of all children with and without special education needs (SEN) within the existing mainstream schools. Many developed countries have already worked on this critical issue. In the developing countries, much less initiatives have been taken to include children with SEN in the mainstream schooling systems. As a result, there is a dearth of research in this area (with the exception of studies on teachers' attitudes), and where efforts (have been) made, they lack enough support, direction and clarity towards inclusive education. In Pakistan, as in many other developing counties, the government has given more attention to the inclusion of girl child in the main stream educational system, as compared to inclusion of the child with SEN. Despite these difficulties, I found a private school in Karachi, Pakistan, which has taken initiatives for implement a policy of inclusion of all children in their school. This study set out to find the perceptions, classroom practices, interactions, facilitating and hindering factors within an inclusive classroom and their relationship with the practical steps that can be taken towards inclusive education. The study was a case study, where in- depth interviews and classroom observations were conducted. The class had three students with SEN, and the remaining 22 students had no special needs. It was found that the participants (teachers, co-ordinator, and principal) had positive attitudes towards inclusion. They perceived that inclusive education (IE) allows all children to share the same school and classroom. There was a two-sided interaction (negative and positive) between perceptions and practices. The study also found that more students with SEN could be accommodated in mainstream classroom than the current number through the existing practice, for example, students having physical handicaps or mild impairments are not particularly disruptive to the classroom. In the research questions, through this study, six major themes were extracted; and they have been analyzed and discussed in chapter four. The key findings