Telangana government to organise free education for students
The education department in Telangana plans to reduce the additional stock of textbooks printed each year for students. The department supplies 2.30 crore textbooks to government schools in the state and around. According to sources, the textbooks will be reduced to 1.68 crore for next academic year, a drop by more than 60 lakh books.
08 Jul 2015 | 2704 Views | By PrintWeek India
The government prints around 30 pieces of supplementary textbooks than the required amount of books for government schools. The surplus stock is kept as an alternative stock for future demand. The surplus textbook stocks which is printed and kept as buffer, the officials figured out that the stocks of textbooks was being moved to private retails shops without government permissions.
According to the sources, the education department in the state has gathered statistics of the students from all government schools and are preparing to print only the required textbooks; to prevent unauthorised business of free textbooks. According to an estimate by the department, the reduced production would save the government around Rs 18 crore.
On 19 November, 2014, then, Telangana education minister G Jagadish Reddy has made it clear that free education from KG to PG was still under the process of discussion and there will be no induction of students for 2014 academic year.
Kadiyam Srihari, presently deputy chief minister and education minister of Telangana state, said there are around 1.5 lakh students in 402 government colleges across Telangana, for them there would be no fee charged. Clarifying that this would mean waiver of Rs 9.3 crore and books worth Rs 6.25 crore would also be given free. “The poor students would be educated free of charge in Hyderabad”, he added on 24 June 2015.
Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) promotes the vision of world-class education in Telangana through quality leadership, support, services and also aims at continuous improvement of education in the State. The board maintains, supervises the system of intermediate education, executes, governs in various activities that include formulating the courses of study, prescribing syllabus, conducting examinations, granting affiliations to colleges, providing direction, support and leadership for all educational institutions under its jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, TSBIE will be launching online services for students including applications for certificate of eligibility equivalency and migration, duplicate marks memo, renewal of affiliation among others, in a process to create paperless environment.