19-02-2013, 03:58 PM
EDUCATION: REFORM PROCESS CONTINUES IN 2011-12 AAKASH, LOW COST COMPUTING DEVICE LAUNCHED
ABSTRACT
In the primary education sector, the reforms initiated in 2010-11, continued during the
year 2011-12. This is stated in Economic Survey 2011-12, presented by the Finance
Minister, Sh. Pranab Mukherjee, in the Lok Sabha today. The expenditure on education as a
proportion of GDP by General government has increased from 2.72 per cent in 2006-07 to
3.11 per cent in 2011-12 (BE).
As per the Survey, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) norms have been revised to
correspond with the provisions of the RTE Act including norms for sanctioning additional
teacher posts, classrooms, teaching-learning equipment to enable states to move to an eightyear
elementary education cycle, enhancement of academic support for better school
supervision, and expansion of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalaya (KGBVs). The National
Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has been notified as the academic authority for
teacher qualifications. Also, a country wide campaign has been launched for raising public
awareness about Right to Education (RTE) and to ensure all schools become RTE compliant.
The number of out-of-school children has come down from 134.6 lakh in 2005 to 81.5 lakh in
2009 as per an independent study conducted by the SRI-IMRB.
The Survey states that as part of the National Mission in Education through ICT,
content generation and connectivity along with provision for access devices for institutions
and learners are the major components of the Mission. A major development during the year
has been the launch of Aakash, the low cost access-cum-computing device that was launched
on 5 October, 2011. Besides so far nearly 400 universities have been provided 1 Gbps
connectivity or have been configured under the scheme and more than 14,000 colleges have
also been provided VPN connectivity. Creation of e-content for 996 courses in Phase II in
engineering, sciences, technology, humanities, and management has been undertaken by IIT
Madras. The Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) has been tasked with
creation of e-content for 87 undergraduate subjects. More than 2000 e-journals and 55,000ebooks
from 297 publishers have been made available online under this programme.
The Survey points out some institutions like the IITs have, in order to promote
innovation, created technology business incubation facilities in their campuses. These are
providing to be focal points amongst students and faculty for working towards taking some of
their applied research to the market through the creation of business models for the same.
These efforts need to be expanded greatly (a) by scaling up the previously successful centres
of such innovations, and (b) by creating many such centres across the higher technical
institutions in the country.