Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad Khan, Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, Corps Commander Lieutenant General Syed Athar Ali, Provincial Education Minister Dr Hamida Khuhro, PML leader Salim Saifullah Khan, former governors of Sindh Lieutenant General Moinuddin Haider (Retd) and Kamal Azfar attended the ceremony.
"I am glad as I am performing the earth breaking ceremony of this great venture", President Musharraf said assuring full support of the government.
He announced an initial sum of Rs five million for the project.
The president said the role of private sector in the field of education was all the more important because of lack of funding in the public sector. Referring to The Hub School project, he said that that high class, high quality school would substantially enhance the private sector participation in schooling in Pakistan.
The president was glad The Hub School would be run on non-profit basis and recommended that while maintaining cent percent merit there should be some relaxation on that count for the poor students.
He stressed the need to go for the wholesome development of a person's character and personality. Three ingredients were important in that respect which he identified as mental, physical and character development. President Musharraf underscored the importance of following a course of action to improve the "pathetic" state of primary and secondary education. A strategy was in place to universalise education and enhance adult literacy, he said, adding that was being done under the Human Resource Development Commission (HRDC) headed by Dr Nasim Ashraf.
He said the syllabus was being improved, teachers' training was underway and appropriate changes were being brought about in the examination system.
Referring to some opposition in this respect, he said a leader was not the one who flew with the current of river but was the one who changed the course of the river.
The president said a Higher Education Commission had been established with Professor Dr Atta ur Rehman as its head to improve higher education. Highlighting the significance of technical schools, he said the government's target was to have one technical school in each district in the initial stage and then take to the tehsil level. Musharraf said the technical schools teach skills required by the country's environment.
He said madaris had about one million students on their rolls and expressed the intention of improving those institutions by mainstreaming them. He said the students at madaris should be taught more subjects and allowed to appear in boards' examinations so that they could venture into a number of fields.
The president pointed out grant for higher education and said had been raised from mere Rs 800 million in the past to Rs 9.1 billion, up by 1,200 percent. The non-development grant had been doubled from Rs 3.4 billion to Rs seven billion.
For science and technology the increase was from a mere Rs 180 million in 1999 to Rs six billion now.