Common School System Commission submits report

Patna, Jun 08 (UNI) Common School System Commission (CSSC) today submitted its report to Bihar government suggesting a nine-year action plan with a wide range of measures for achieving the goal of quality and uniform education to all students of the state, irrespective of their caste, religion and financial position.

CSSC has also prepared a draft bill and advised the government to introduce the same in both houses of the state legislature to implement its recommendations.

After submitting the report to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, chairman of CSSC Muchkund Dubey told newspersons here that a comprehensive nine year action plan had been suggested to the government for achieving the goal of uniform education in the state.

Elaborating on the action plan, he said that the goal of free and compulsory education for all children of the age group of 5-14 had been advised to be achieved within five years starting from April 2008.

For strong constitional and pedagogical reasons, the commission had suggested to include one year of pre-elementary stage within the scope of free and compulsory education, he added.

''Similarly secondary education will be universalised in eight years by 2015-16 while all the facilities for ensuring 70 per cent transition from Class X to the senior secondary level will be put in place by 2016-17,'' Mr Dubey said.

'' The state will need an annual average expenditure of Rs 17,221.5 crore over the nine years period while the additional spending of the funds in 2008-09, the commencement year of the plan, would be Rs 10,699.6 crore, which works out to be 32.2 per cent of the total public expenditure during that year,'' he explained.

Mr Dubey said that number of schools would have to be increased by 2.5 per cent while different forms of schools would be required to be reduced from 13 to 3.

As per the recommendations, every school would have to enroll students of its adjoining localities even without conducting any test or interview.

UNI