Chief Minister publicly admitted the decay in education sector, but attributed it to wrong prioritization, policies and planning of his predecessors in office. In a way, he was right in stating that a large number of colleges and higher secondary schools were opened for vote bank politics without creating the required infrastructure. It might have been a politically motivated decision but it is inexcusable that no serious effort was made during past six years for even recruiting academic staff for these colleges. Most of the colleges are even today without proper regular faculty. Through its ad hoc policies, the government has been playing with the career of thousands of students. It has been blaming lack of funds and resources but fact of the matter is that the state education department has been failing in tapping many centrally sponsored schemes for developing these colleges, universities and other academic institutions. Moreover, wherever funds are   available these are not timely utilized causing hurdles in further flow of funds to the state under centrally sponsored schemes.
Two years back under centrally sponsored RMSA scheme for universalizing access to secondary education to the children in the age group 14-18 years an amount of Rs 315. 35 Crores was allocated to the state. The objective of the scheme launched under national education policy is to achieve an enrollment of 75 percent for classes 9th and 10th within five years by providing a secondary school at a reasonable distance of every habitation. The scheme started with noble objective of improving quality education and removing gender, socio-economic and disability barriers would go a long way in changing education scene in the state. There can be no denying that the state government has opened a good number of new schools under the scheme but these schools have suffered the fate of colleges established during past few years. No funds under the scheme have been released so far, the ostensible reason for such delays can be lack of the follow up by the state government. Now that the Education Department is with the Chief Minister, he needs to take due interest in improving this department.

Lastupdate on : Mon, 5 Mar 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 5 Mar 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 6 Mar 2012 00:00:00 IST