Date:07/11/2009 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/11/07/stories/2009110756490700.htm

Tamil Nadu

Raise Government spending on education

Staff Reporter

Photo: M. Balaji

T.K. Rangarajan, MP, (fifth from right ) handing over the furniture obtained from MP’s Local Area Development Fund to Jaiva Bhai Corporation Girls Higher Secondary School in Tirupur. –

Tirupur: The government spending on education should be increased multifold from the present three percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) if the quality of education in the country is to be improved, CPI(M) leader T.K.Rangarajan, MP, said.

“Though the United Progressive Alliance government during its first innings promised to increase the spending on education to 6 per cent of the GDP, it still remains an assurance in words,” he said.

Mr. Rangarajan was distributing Rs. 10 lakh worth of furniture to the Jaiva Bhai Corporation Girls Higher Secondary school procured using the corpus earmarked to him under the MP’s Local Area Development Fund (MPLADF), here recently.

Quality

He said that though the Union Government talks extensively on compulsory education for students aged between six and 14 years, the quality of primary education segment still left lot to be desired.

He hinted at the need for an output accreditation to evaluate how well the students were educated once they emerged out of the schools. “Teacher to student ratio are now very poor in many states,” he said citing that in states like Bihar teacher-student ratio is 1:80 against the norms of 1:40.

He said it was concern that even in cities like Tirupur, which consumes 100 MW of power a day indicating extraordinary industrial prowess, school infrastructure remains far from adequate.

“It is to address this issue only, I spent Rs one crore out of the total Rs two crore allocated to me under MPLADF last fiscal towards improvement of education infrastructure in the state,” he said.

C. Govindasamy, MLA, promised that he would earmark Rs. 10 lakh from his constituency development fund next fiscal towards improvement of infrastructure at Jaiva Bhai school.

Headmistress Vijaya Anandam was present.