Achievements under Twelfth Plan

The priority areas of higher education during the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-17) are focuson expansion, equity and excellence with a greater emphasis on quality of higher education mainly by way of setting up of new institutions; greater emphasis on funding of State institutions to improve infrastructural facilities; ensuringavailability,recruitmentandretentionofqualifiedpeopletomeetthegrowing need  for  quality  faculty;  upgrading  the  skills  ofexisting  faculty  and  building  synergies between teachingandresearch to promote excellencein both; making use of the transformative potential of new technologies to improve quality, reduce cost, improve processes and efficiency and reach a larger body of students; and focus on skills within the higher education by setting up of community colleges and polytechnics.

 

To meet the above stated priorities, a number of initiatives have been taken such as opening of new institutions of higher education, implementation of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers & Teaching, launching of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on SWAYAM platform and Uchchatar Aavishkar Abhiyan programme to promote industry-specific need-based research. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology has been envisaged as a scheme with the objective of making the best use of ICT with the purpose of identification and nurturing of talent and life-long learning as well as extending the education facility to a larger section of people. During the Twelfth Five Year Plan, a new scheme called the  Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) has been approved which aims to achieve equity, access and excellence in higher education. The scheme supports components such as upgrading autonomous colleges to universities, clustering colleges to establish a university, setting up of new professional colleges in un-served and underserved areas as well as providing infrastructure grants to universities and colleges to scale up capacity.

 

For school education major priority areas, inter alia, include universal access, free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6 to 14 years, improve attendance and reduce dropout rates and improve the learning outcome. To achieve these objectives, major activities undertaken are  construction of school toilets under Swachh Vidyalay initiative,  implementation of Udaan programme to ensure quality education for girl child and to enable them to get enrolment in technical education through academic support, Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat initiative to increase learning outcomes in children. In addition, initiatives have been taken to monitor performance in school via E-Governance. Saransh is a tool for comprehensive self-review and analysis for CBSE affiliated schools and parents. It enables them to analyze students' performance in order to take remedial measures. Shaala Darpan is to track child’s school activities and performances with regular updates through SMS and website thereby bringing transparency. Shaala Siddhi is a comprehensive school evaluation system focused on well-defined quality based parameters. More than 70% of Government Schools in India have been mapped on a GIS platform to help in policy and planning, and e-Pathshala & e-CBSE have been created to provide the students, teachers, parents and educators with free access to all NCERT and CBSE textbooks anytime, anywhere.

There is an inbuilt mechanism to monitor the progress of the schemes through Project Appraisal Boards and Joint Review Missions.  Periodic monitoring of schemes is undertaken by the senior officials of the ministry.

 

This information was given by the Minister of State (HRD), Dr. Mahendra Nath Pandey in a written reply to a Lok Sabha question.

Courtesy: pib.nic.in