Focus shifts to quality education

After the success of ‘Sarva Siksha Abhiyan,’ the government now wants to focus on quality of elementary and secondary education, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 27, 2007, 02:32:40 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After the success of ‘Sarva Siksha Abhiyan,’ the government now wants to focus on quality of elementary and secondary education.

A plan to bring quality government schools on the pattern of Kendriya Vidhalaya and CBSE and improve overall education in the country, will be discussed at a Planning Commission meeting headed by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh next Tuesday.

The HRD ministry, in a survey, had found that about 73 per cent of the enrolled students in India don’t attend schools and more than half of upper primary school students cannot divide a three-digit figure with one digit. In states like Bihar, student absenteeism is as high as 60 per cent. Moreover, teacher absenteeism is about 20 per cent.

The ministry also says that dropout rate in elementary education has remained as high as 47 per cent. In primary level, the drop out rate has reduced from 39 per cent to 29 per cent in last decade, touted as major achievement by the government. Now, the Centre has decided to deal with these concerns and create a National Mission for Quality in Elementary Education, where in 6,000 new schools to be opened would be of the highest quality.

Under the programme, special focus on science and mathematics in upper primary level, introduction of English from class III, 100 per cent trained teachers by 2011-12 and cluster resource centre for every 10 schools and five resource teachers per block.

The government also wants to open new 500 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhalayas residential schools for girls with preference to minority concentration areas. In addition, basic infrastructure facilities will be improved in 90,000 schools, 6.87 new classrooms would be constructed and 8.86 lakh new teachers would be appointed in the next five years.

The Commission and HRD ministry has prepared a detailed plan of Rs 2.67 lakh crore for the next five years on improving overall education in the country.

It includes opening of new 30 universities, 370 colleges, seven IITs, eight IIMs and 20 IIITs in the next five years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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