Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Friday said that the State Government has set the target of achieving Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 30 per cent at the higher secondary level, and private sector educational institutions have to play a vital role in realising the objective.
Hooda was addressing the inaugural session of the national conference on “A New Era of Industrial Development in Northern India - Role of Private Sector Educational Institutions”, organised by the Educational Promotion Society of India (EPSI) in collaboration with PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, here. At present, the GER of Haryana is 20.13 per cent which translates into about 12.7 lakh students. In order to achieve the target of 30 per cent GER, eight lakh more students need to be enrolled.
Hooda said that the State Government had taken extensive steps in the direction of imparting quality higher education, to increase GER, make students employable, and produce such students as were able to take global challenges.
Dishing out comparative figures to support his claims, Hooda said that in 2004-05, there were only 161 technical education institutions in the State with annual intake of about 28,445 students. But today, the number of such institutions has grown to 662 with a total intake of about 1.5 lakh students.
“In order to augment the State’s prowess in education, we have provided an outlay of about Rs 15,000 crore to the sector in 12th Five Year Plan”, Hooda disclosed. “The State today has 242 degree and above colleges against 67 in Himachal and 231 in Punjab. Similarly, the number of professional colleges in the State is 662 whereas it is 11 in Himachal and 229 in Punjab. There are 32 universities, including public and private, as compared to seven in Himachal and 15 in Punjab,” added the Chief Minister.
“In order to develop good faculty, we have set up a Teacher’s Training Institute at Jhajjar”, he said. “We have enacted the Private Universities Act to encourage healthy competition to promote quality education and to attract private investment in the field of higher education and promote establishment of institutions of higher learning of international standards”, he added.
Urging the people to opt for sports as a career, Hooda added that besides education, Haryana has also made its mark in sports. In the Commonwealth Games, out of the total 38 Gold medals won by India, 22 were won by the players from Haryana.