Bangalore: Making vocational education and even professional courses available to students from marginalised sections will be the focus during the general body meeting of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) to be held here from February 8 to 15 at St. Peter's Pontifical Seminary.

CBCI President Telephore P. Cardinal Toppo told presspersons here on Tuesday that the theme for this year's meeting is "Catholic Education and the Church's Concern for the Poor." This is in keeping with the Vatican's directive that all human beings have an inalienable right to education.

`Best gift'

"Education is one of the best gifts the Church offers young people in India, and qualitative changes needed to make education more relevant to contemporary needs will be discussed by the gathering of over 160 Catholic bishops from across the country," Cardinal Toppo said.

Though basic education is compulsory, the Government, due to the policy of privatisation, is forced to withdraw funding, and this has resulted in good education being denied to the marginalised, who cannot pay for schooling. This affects the development and social mobility of the poor.

The CBCI wants targets set to educate all children at least up to the higher secondary level and says the Church has the necessary infrastructure in the form of well-established schools across the country. "Only the political will is lacking," Cardinal Toppo remarked.

The Church will work to sensitise parents about the importance and benefits of education, involve communities in the process and its schools will provide coaching and career guidance to students.

Archbishop of Bangalore Bernard Moras said that in recent years there have been several attempts to revitalise Catholic schools, and there were national consultations on Catholic education in 1999 and again in 2002. The action plan evolved as a follow-up showed the need to make education at all levels affordable to the marginalised sections of society.

Around 66 per cent of Catholic educational institutions are in rural areas, 80 per cent are co-ed, 55 per cent of students are girls, 77 per cent of the students are non-Catholics and 75 per cent are from the lower income groups, he said.

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