Process underway to achieve 11th Plan education objectives

New Delhi, Apr 1 (UNI) 'Expansion, inclusion and rapid improvement in quality' is the core of the Eleventh Plan vision for education, as approved by the NDC, and the process has already started for achieving these objectives.

The Plan envisages enhancing public spending, encouraging private initiatives and undertaking the long overdue major institutional and policy reforms in the higher and technical education.

An outlay of about Rs 85,000 crore has accordingly been projected for higher and technical education during the Plan period, which marks an over nine times increase (at current prices) over the 10th Plan outlay for the sector.

Priorities for higher education in the XI Plan are expansion of access (i.e. of institutional infrastructure), equity (i.e. to ensure effective participation of disadvantaged groups, and to correct regional imbalances), improvement of quality, and optimal use of Information and Communication Technology to promote achievement of these objectives.

The 11th Plan aims, inter alia, at increasing Gross Enrolment Ratio from 11 per cent in 2006 to 15 per cent by 2011-12 through rapid expansion of higher education system while ensuring quality and inclusion, and also restructuring and reorienting higher education system to meet the requirements of a knowledge economy in a globalised world.

These objectives would be achieved by implementing various major programmes in 11th Plan.

Eight new IITs will be established, and the process for establishing four of them in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh is already underway.

Besides seven new IIMs will be set up, of which the first, at Shillong, would start functioning from the next academic session.

Other programes are as follows: Establishment of three new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research of which one has already started functioning at Mohali and two more would come up soon in Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram.

This is over and above the two IISERs at Pune and Kolkata which started in the last year of the 10th Plan.

Setting up 16 Central Universities in the states which have not any at present. These states are Jammu&Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Gujarat and Goa, and another 14 Central Universities which would aim to attain world class standards.

Establishment of 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology as far as possible in the Public-Private Partnership mode.

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