Kalam favours national policy for 'Global Human Development Cadre'

New Delhi, May 14 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today called for a national policy for creating a 'Global Human Development Cadre' in a time bound manner which will help generate quality knowledge and skills needed by all sectors of Indian economy and globally employable human resources.

''Fundamental to this is imparting quality and value based education in the schools. Particularly, primary education is a very important component in the pursuit of higher education and capacity building. Quality input to higher education leads to generation quality human resource,'' Dr Kalam said while addressing the inaugural fucntion of CII Education Summit here.

Corporate houses can make an important contribution by adopting these schools particularly in rural areas in their region and providing infrastructure for schools in the form of clean drinking water, toilet facilities, transportation facilities for children coming from far away distances, equipping the sport complexes and providing computing facilities for technology assisted learning, he added.

Seven million students after their secondary school education in 10th and 12th stop further education and seek employment every year, the President said and added ''We have to prevent the increasing drop-outs''.

In nursing professional, India is in the process of improving the healthcare services which will need additional 0.5 million nurses and paramedical staff, he said.

Keeping this in mind, he favoured for a global human resource cadre which will help powering the manufacturing and services sector of the country.

Dr Kalam further said the aim of the education system should be to create employment generators rather than employment seekers apart from building research capability.

For building capacity, it is essential to increase the teacher- student ratio, improve the quality of teachers, provide continuous methods for upgradation and provide them with technology aids for becoming life long autonomous learners, the President said.

On the occasion, Bharti Enterprises Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said there is an urgent need to have a check on school drop-outs and curriculam and teaching.

''We need to increase the salaries and compensation of faculties so that students can shift towards teaching,'' Mr Mittal said adding that higher education system is also to be improved in a big way.

UNI