Dr. Avnish Jolly:Government of India will set up 2,500 new model schools designed after the existing state-run Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) to provide quality education to students in every block of the country’ from August, according to Arun K Rath, Secretary, Human Resource Development (HRD).
Since their inception in 1965, the Kendriya Vidyalayas have come to be known as centres of excellence in school education. Run under the HRD ministry, India currently has 981 such central schools.
Rath said that they will be quality schools like the existing Kendriya Vidyalayas. Our ministry wants that all blocks across the country must have at least one model school and the Ministry and the state governments have agreed on all arrangements, including financial matters.
Secretary revealed that every school will need an investment of Rs 30 million. While the central government will bear 75 per cent of the cost, the state governments’ share would be 25 per cent and all these would be co-educational schools and set up over a period of three years and the selection of students will be taken care of by the state governments.
HRD Secretary shared apart from these 2,500 model schools, the HRD Ministry was in talks with private parties to set up 2,500 additional model schools on a public-private participation (PPP) model and nothing has been finalised on the PPP model schools. But efforts are certainly on. At this point, I cannot give a timeline on when these PPP schools will begin.
The Secretary informed that his ministry is striving to reduce the number of out of school students and the government is achieving steady progress through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and through SSA we have managed to achieve considerable progress. While in 2005 there were 40 million out of school students (6-14 age group), currently only 4.5 million students of school-going age are out of school.