HP has one teacher for every 17 students

Shimla, Aug 12 (UNI) Himachal Pradesh, which has one teacher for every 17 students, has one of the best teacher-pupil ratio in the country, said Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal.

"The state has a huge manpower of about 50,000 teachers, which includes 42.23 per cent of women teachers in primary and 28.36 per cent in upper primary sections," the Chief Minister said in the review meeting of the Education Department held here today.

There are over 12.50 lakh enrolment of the students in the vast network of over 15,000 educational institutions in the government sector. The percentage of girls in all schools is 47.27 percent and in government schools is 49.22 per cent.

He said that over the years the pass percentage had increased substantially and the drop out rate had minimised to just negligible.

He said that Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Kinnaur, Lahaul and Spiti districts had registered cent percent enrolment and only a few which were severely disabled or mentally challenged were left out. Efforts were being made to provide them trainers to educate such children at home, he added.

Mr Dhumal emphasised the need to motivate the parents of the children who were not being sent to the schools for formal education where the local teachers could play pivotal role.

Mr Dhumal said that the state would be making preparations to implement the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan to develop senior secondary schools accessible and affordable to the young people in the age group of 15-16, improve quality of education through making all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms, remove gender, socio-economic and disability barriers so that universal access was achieved by the year 2017.

He said that the scheme would be on the funding pattern of 75:25 by the Centre and State. He said that the scheme aimed at having at least one good senior secondary school in every development block having innovative curriculum and qualified teachers.

He said that the earlier schemes of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan had yielded encouraging results and had been instrumental in strengthening the infrastructure and improve the education quality in the educational institutions.

He said that the state government would be developing one government degree college in every district as centre of par excellence to bring qualitative improvement in the educational system.

UNI XC PS BP1712