Coming out with ambitious expansion plans, the Education Department of Delhi along with technical and higher education department have released a list of their budget sanctions to improve infrastructure and quality of education imparted in schools and colleges.
While The Pioneer had on Saturday written about the Education Department spending Rs345 crore to construct 20 new schools in Rohini and Dwarka, the department has also allotted Rs59 crore to make new classrooms. However, funds have been sanctioned for initiating programmes for technical education keeping ITIs in mind and also got land and started construction of colleges and expanding campuses of Ambedkar University and Indraprastha University.
Principal Secretary of Education Anindo Majumdar said, “The Directorate of Education runs 1,007 Government schools catering to about 16 lakh students, administering 211 aided and 1,284 private unaided schools in Delhi. To ensure that the education being imparted is up-to-the-mark, we have sanctioned 500 new classrooms and also set aside Rs30 crore for major and minor repairs of school buildings. To ensure that this is maintained, inspections are also being carried out where schools have been categorised in three zones — green being the best maintained, yellow being satisfactory and red being the completely unkempt ones.”
Special attention has been given by the DoE to children with special needs. Majumdar said that the directorate identified 1,735 children who required different aids and appliances in schools. “We have provided 1,653 children with hearing aids, spectacles and crutches. There is shortage of trained personnel but we are working on that and in due course of time this will be taken care of,” he added.
In higher and technical education, director technical education Arun Mishra said that the directorate is working towards accomplishing the ‘Make in India’ mission by introducing industry and academic linkages. Majumdar explained, “We have introduced three programmes for ITIs. The first is providing public-private partnership (PPP) where an institute management committee will be formed and headed by an industry partner. The Government will give this committee Rs2.5 crore which they can use to upgrade the infrastructure of ITIs and then return the loan back to the Government. Nine institutes in Delhi will do this.”
The second programme is by the World Bank which will be a vocational training improvement programme and will be offered at four ITIs. The third programme, Majumdar added, was that memorandums of understanding are being signed with industries to train students of ITIs and then absorb them as well. “We have already roped in Samsung for the same.
These programmes are all for skill upgradation. A world-class skill centre at Jonapur in South Delhi will also be coming up for Retail and Hospitality. It has already started functioning in ITI Vivek Vihar with few students. Once the campus is ready, 5,000 students will be admitted,” he said.
The directorate has also sanctioned Rs168 crore for the construction of NIT at Narela. The land has been acquired, said Majumdar. As far as colleges are concerned, the directorate is making a new campus for IP University at Surajmal Vihar in East Delhi which will be the East Campus of the university. Even Ambedkar University is all set to get two new campuses in Dhirpur where the directorate has spent Rs111 crore and in Rohini Sector III where land has been taken from Delhi Technical University.
The directorate has also spent Rs132 crore on making campus for Delhi University’s Sukhdev College in Rohini and Rs150 crore on Deen Dayal Upadhyay College in Dwarka. land for making Valmiki College in Sector 17 of Rohini has also been acquired.