Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Education for all must to maintain growth rate, says Chidambaram

CHENNAI: If India is to sustain the current level of economic growth rate, it is vital to provide expanded education opportunities to all, Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said here on Saturday.

Delivering the annual convocation address at the Women’s Christian College (WCC), he said while investment and productivity were essential for increasing economic growth and eradicating poverty, human capital also played a critical role. According to one estimate, improvement in human capital alone might have contributed around 1-2 percentage points to the current high growth rate. To sustain this growth rate, it was vital that expanded education opportunities were made available to all.

Stating that the National Skill Development Mission was launched to impart skills to school-leaving children so that they could earn a livelihood, he said: “Even after completing 10 years of education, children are found wanting in logical and communication skills. Their arithmetic skills do not go beyond simple multiplication and division... Besides, school education in India does not equip the child with any work skills that can enable the child to obtain useful employment.” Mr. Chidambaram regretted that even after 58 years, States had failed to fulfil their promise of providing free and compulsory education for all children until they completed the age of 14. Currently, about 7.6 million children were out of school.

According to him, 25 per cent of the children drop out at the end of class V. By class X the ratio went up to 61 per cent. Therefore, the challenge at the upper primary stage of education was to retain the child in school.

In this connection, he recalled several incentives such as free tuition, free books, extension of the mid-day meal scheme up to class VIII, scholarships and fixed deposit accounts for girl children introduced by the Centre.

The immediate goal of the Centre was to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) to 15 per cent by end-2012 as the number of students turned out by colleges and universities every year was woefully short of the requirements of a fast growing economy.

“The GER [the proportion of school-leaving children admitted to a college or university] in developed countries is 54 per cent. The world average is 23.2 per cent and in India, currently it is 11.6 per cent. It also falls short on the quality standards required to promote efficiency in a competitive world. Therefore, our immediate goal is to raise the GER to 15 per cent by end of 11th Five Year Plan and then to 21 per cent by the end of the next Five Year Plan,” he said.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu