Haryana takes steps to promote IT in education

Perceiving that educational courses without technical skills are redundant, the Haryana education department has decided to make computer education mandatory in schools and colleges. 

Talking to Business Standard, Rajan Gupta, commissioner and secretary (education), Haryana, said the state had shortlisted 25 government colleges and 213 government schools (if suitable infrastructure is there) to implement the new guidelines in the next academic session (2009-10). This will then be rolled out in all 280 government colleges and 5,200 government high/senior secondary schools.

Gupta said the state government was looking for private partners to access computer education through the build-operate-own route. He apprised that Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) were the hired consultants for the project. He added that the names of successful partners would be decided by the next month.

“With the rapid industrialisation of the state and fragmentation of land holdings, the job opportunities are only in manufacturing and service sector. Through consistent feedback from the industry representatives about the dearth of requisite manpower, the state has decided to restructure its education system, the results of which may be conspicuous in the next four to five years”, Gupta said.

The state has decided to replace the seats in humanities to courses which are more job oriented. In the current academic year, 16,000 seats have been created for the courses that are in demand.

The department is in constant touch with experts in universities to start new courses in the post-lunch time, to utilise the given infrastructure in the best way possible.

The state has also decided to introduce the project-based learning from class III to Master courses to promote interactive learning.

“It is not only the corporate sector that faces scarcity of employable workforce. The education sector has also been hit by the non-availability of suitable and competent candidates. There is severe crunch of availability of teachers for physical sciences. This might compel us to look for alternatives and hire graduates with engineering degrees to teach students in secondary schools in the coming days", he added.