HRD ministry to get Rs 19,000 crore more for school education

By 2010, the ministry targets to bring all out of the school children to a formal education system, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 11, 2006, 23:14:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To give boost to school education in the country, the Planning Commission has approved in principle to universalise education up to secondary level in the next five years.

Although it is not what the HRD ministry had ordered for, still it will get Rs 19,000 crore in the next five years from the Planning Commission for school education. The HRD ministry has submitted proposal for universalisation of education till higher secondary level. In the first two years, the ministry is expected to get additional Rs 5,000 crores followed by Rs 3,000 crores in the remaining three years.

The HRD ministry informed the Consultative Committee on the ministry on Monday that the Planning Commission’s decision would give a new direction to school education in the country. “There will be a system in place where in a student enrolling in a school will at least complete matric examination,” an official said.

By 2010, the ministry targets to bring all out of the school children to a formal education system and by then, the infrastructure till class X education will also be strengthened. “The next few years would be crucial for education in India,” a ministry official commented.

The committee was also informed about the new initiatives of the ministry to end gender discrimination in education, including a new scheme proposed for education of the girl child. Under the scheme, special attention would be given to enrolment and further education of the girl child, an official said.

Another attempt to strengthen education for girl is by way of opening about 1,700 new Kasturba Gandhi Bal Vidalayas in the next five years. The proposal is pending with the Planning Commission. The ministry also presented an action taken report on schemes for girl child education to the committee.

However, the issue on agenda of the meeting was Science Education. The ministry informed the committee members about the steps taken by NCERT, UGC and AICTE to attract more students towards science education including new scholarship programmes.

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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