Being one of the youngest and biggest democracies of the planet, the country serves to a total population of over 130 crore people, of which, 50% is still under the age of 30 years. With the times changing like a flip of an array of channels on television, it is important to build the youth of the nation strong and versatile enough to not be at a loss no matter how adversely the times change.
Premier institutes of higher education in the country like that of IIHMs, IITs and IIMs have reached out to every corner of the nation to help talent surface, which otherwise might have just died. The education system in India in going through a process of metamorphosis, right from the elementary level to higher education.
A new crop of candidates surface every year which offer a lot to the growth of innovations and inventions and come up with alternate ways of boosting the efficiency of the manpower in order to serve the future of the nation better. Despite this potential in the youth of the country, the need of government to still fix a lot in the educational sector, especially in the K-12 classes.
In the present day, with pass percentage much lower than acceptable, government schools are barely managing to keep their heads above water, let alone the condition of ‘hygienic education’ they pull off. These schools are struggling with dozens of issues like shortage of teachers, blackboard, benches, classrooms, toilets etc.
It has been a long walk since independence, and along this walk, every government that came and went by has worked to make the situation of the sector better. Nevertheless, the rate of illiteracy has been ever-rising, even with the motto of education for all.
The low rate of illiteracy is all thanks to lack of awareness and education among the people, who have led to this big a blunderuos state of the Indian education system.
To put things around, the Government of India has introduced a number of new programs and has been modifying the old ones according to the changing times to catch up with the needs of present.
Right from the ‘no detention policy’ to digital payment campaign, both the state and the union government have been introducing various new steps to turn the table around.
1. Many State governments have decided to have their teachers trained in reputed foreign institutes so as to polish their skills by acquiring quality educational processes.
2. The applaud-worthy move by Telangana stands which made gender education mandatory at the graduation level, being the first state to take any such move. Colleges affiliated to the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU-Hyderabad) have been introduced the bilingual textbook named Towards a World of Equals in engineering colleges.
3. The decision taken by the Delhi High Court of issuing provisional certificate by a varsity works valid till a degree is issued, providing much aid to the students as they cannot be denied admission for the sake that they are unable to provide their previous degree.
4. All who enroll in any ICSE or CBSE course have to take up yoga classes, as per the new policies.
To add to these and steps alike, the Centre has implemented a lot many schemes with the vision to change the face of education in India. Some of these are listed below.
SAAKSHAR BHARAT
The focus area of Saakshar Bharat Programme is beyond the three R’s, at raising awareness in reference to social disparities and the sufferings of each individual due to these. It also works to make people aware of the practices to maintain general well-being. Coming into existence in 2009, the prime focus of this programme was to push national literacy levels above the mark of 80%, focusing mainly on children and women. The focus rested much on female literacy as the aim was to bridge the much wide gap between the literacy levels of men and women to no more than ten percent points.
MID-DAY MEAL:
With the provision to provide every kid in every government schools, the Mid-Day Meal comes with the objective of providing a free meal to the students at government aided primary schools with a minimum content of 300 calories and 8-12gm protein per day for a minimum of 200 days. The objective for this schemes is to boost enrollment and retention, along with taking the nutritional level among the students to a certain height.
NATIONAL SCHEME OF INCENTIVES TO GIRLS FOR SECONDARY EDUCATION
Launched by the Centre in May, 2008, the scheme was brought into the picture to create more enrollment of girl child belonging to the age group of 14-18 at secondary level.
SARVA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN:
Being one of the most key initiative to take in maximum enrollment and impart education to as many as possible, the programme has been operation since 2000, 2001. The SSA has come up with multiple ways to universally access education and also retain whatever is learnt. The key job of SSA to cater to its objective is opening new schools, provide alternative services of education, construction of schools and to top it all, additional classes, sanitized toilets and hygienic water with provisioning for teachers, regular teacher in service training and academic resource support, free textbooks and uniforms and support for improving learning achievement levels.
RASHTRIYA MADHYAMIK SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (RMSA)
This scheme has its vision fixed on making the secondary education accessible to all and to improve its quality in the state. Coming into the picture of India in 2009, the scheme scored a total enrollment of 75% from 52.26% in 2005-06 at secondary stage of implementation of the scheme by providing a secondary school within a reasonable distance of any habitation.The scheme also works to persuade all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms, removing gender, socio-economic and disability barriers, providing universal access to secondary level education by 2017. Going with the pace, the objective might seem a little distant to be achieved as of yet, but very soon, it might be achieved.
There are many other works of the government fucntioning to bring about change in the entire image of the sector, and hence, the future seems much brighter with such investment in the potential youth of the country.
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