Nine AMU schools to get Rs 84 crore for upgradation

Nine schools up to higher secondary level housing over 15,000 students in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) will be brought at par with public sector Kendriya Vidalayas (KV).

Updated on: Jan 2, 2012, 20:39:15 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Nine schools up to higher secondary level housing over 15,000 students in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) will be brought at par with public sector Kendriya Vidalayas (KV).

The University Grants Commission has decided to make a special allocation of Rs 84 crore to AMU to meet the KV parameters. The majority of the students in these nine schools including one run by AMU Students Union are Muslims.

The decision came at the time when the UPA government has announced schemes for welfare of minorities in election bound Uttar Pradesh including 4.5 % reservation for minorities in 27% seats reserved for Other Backward Classes in jobs and admissions.

The UGC’s decision on direction of the HRD ministry also provides money for taking over ABK High School, started by the students union in 1946, by the university administration as the school was facing financial crunch. There are over 3,000 students studying in the union school and have 94 teachers.

However, the UGC has decided that the school will be taken over only if the present management structure is wounded up and the staff agrees to upgrade their skills to meet the KV norms. “Time will be provided to the existing staff to upgrade their skills,” UGC chairperson Ved Prakash told HT.

Once the teachers of these schools upgrade their skills their salaries would also increase. The proposal approved by UGC says that the revised salaries would be extended to such teachers and non-teaching staff qualified and having experience was per standards prescribed by KV.

Once the schools meet the KV standards, the UGC wants the AMU to double the present intake capacity by running second shift during evening hours. The money for that will be provided through AMU funds, an official said.

Many other Central Universities such as Jawaharlal Nehru University have schools under their administration, normally run by the Kendriya Vidalaya Sangathan (KVS). The schools were opened in late 1980s to provide a high grade school education system within universities to provide education to children close to the universities.

However, schools under AMU were neglected for lack of funds and some of them were said to be in the poor shape. The AMU had sought special funds from the HRD ministry for upgrading infrastructure and teaching levels in these schools. The proposal was finally approved last week.

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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