India to achieve 80 percent literacy rate by 2015, says Pallam Raju

Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Dr. M.M. Pallam Raju on Thursday said India is to achieve 80 percent literacy rate in the next two years.

Dr. Pallam Raju, who inaugurated an International Conference on Achieving Literacy for All, said that more than 20 crore people have become literates since the last Census of 2001 out of which more than half of them are females.

He said that the HRD Ministry is restructuring the entire adult education system in the country with a paradigm shift to lifelong education to achieve the goal of 80 per cent literacy by 2015.

Dr. Pallam Raju announced that an appropriate administrative and if required legislative process will be initiated to integrate formal, non-formal and informal learning and to formally recognize forms of education other than formal. He clarified that recognition, validation and accreditation of learning obtained through adult education will be formalized by setting up equivalency framework.

Stressing on the fact that the government is keen to continuously improve the quality of adult learning, he added that a Core Curriculum Framework for adult education has been developed and is currently undergoing consultative process. The framework will address total quality management in adult literacy. Full support will be given to adult education by providing adequate resources including funding, research complemented by knowledge management systems and through other innovative means including use of computer ICT as a medium of instruction, he added.

Speaking on the occasion, the UN Resident Coordinator Lise Grande complimented India for fighting illiteracy and making achievements in the field of education sector.

However, she said that India should continue with its struggle against illiteracy. More than seventy crore people globally do not know reading, writing and arithmetic and most of them are in India, China, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The three- day international conference will focus on effective, innovative approaches to scale up literacy, reduce gender disparities and create a literate world.

The conference has been organized by National Literacy Mission Authority (NLMA), India along with UNESCO and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL).