Education system needs to re-align to meet challenges: Kalam

New Delhi, Jan 12 (UNI) With nearly 10 million youth entering into the employment market every year, India needs a large number of talented pool and there is need of the education system to re-align itself to bridge the gap, President APJ Abdul Kalam said here today.

He said education should be fully geared to participate in the societal transformation. He stressed that there is a large gap in the availability of employable skill and how to bridge the gap is the real question.

''The universities should produce employment generators, instead of employment seekers,'' Mr Kalam said while launching CII e-learning portal, Shiksha India in the capital.

On the occasion, he also rewarded teachers from various school with Shiksha's first National awards on e-excellence for their performance under the Shiksha India Programme.

Referring to the youth migration from rural areas, he mentioned that the displacement of 10 per cent people from the agriculture sector has to be facilitated through skill enabling for undertaking value added tasks in the rural enterprises so that migration to urban areas is reduced.

Instead of persons from the rural areas going to urban towns in search of jobs in manufacturing and services sectors, PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) facilitates creation of employment in the rural areas itself, the President said.

PURA achieves this by providing physical, electronic and knowledge connectivities to a cluster of villages thereby leading to their economic connectivity and prosperity.

Mentioning the wide role which the portal can play to promote e-learning in rural areas, he said Shiksha India should become a major partner in providing knowledge connectivity to the rural clusters.

The core competence of the shiksha portal is to provide a platform for content development and delivery by the interested teachers, experts and the students. The content may cover physics, chemistry, maths, biology, geography in English, Hindi, Tamil and other languages, he added.

Presently, shiksha has designed the content for 32 modules of multimedia rich, school curriculum in CDs for children in the age group 12-16.

Shiksha has reached 457 rural-based NVS schools and 100 other Non-NVS schools, it has also reached 300 schools in small and big towns and cities through computer-based tutorial CDs.

To improve its efficiency and reachability, the portal will have all the contents available within a month.

UNI