The Conference of State Education Secretaries is being held here today. The Conference was inaugurated by the Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Smt. Smriti Irani. She sought the States’ co-operation in improving school education. She spoke about the need for improvement of quality of schools which still remains a challenge.

The Minister launched “Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat” programme which focuses on early reading, writing and comprehension and early grade mathematics. She requested States for the roll out of this programme in their respective States with the strong resolve so that children in early grades acquire proficiency in writing, reading and comprehension that would enable them to progress to higher classes with the confidence of good education. During 2014-15. Rs 2352.57 crore has been allocated to States/UTs for improvement of quality programmes.

The Union Minister also launched a publication titled “Including Children with Special Needs – Primary Stage” on Curriculum Adaptation Development brought out by NCERT to help teachers create an inclusive classroom environment for Children with Special Needs. In this context she indicated that though considerable progress was made in bringing such children into regular schools, providing a truly inclusive education remained an unfinished agenda for which everyone would have to work harder.

Information technology has been a core area of the learning system and its outreach needs to be extended to cover all students. To this end she launched the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan website for wide public awareness of the programme. She also informed that the Shala Darpan programme that the Ministry is planning to launch soon, would allow for a greater participation of parents and community in the school activities.

While referring to the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Abhiyan initiative of the Government, the Minister appealed to the State/UTs to pay special attention to the girl’s education and create an enabling environment for girls to come to schools and complete their education. She also requested States to prepare an action plan for construction of toilets in all government schools so that the vision and goal set by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech for providing all government schools with toilets within one year becomes a reality.

Source: PIB