Punjab government to give free education to girls from Nursery till PhD

To make education more accessible to girls, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has announced free education for girls, from kindergarten to doctorate, in government institutions.

Facts :

• CM announced that the government will sponsor the education of girls from nursery up to PhD in all government institutions.
• Along with that, there are also plans to give free textbooks to students from government schools and free WiFi for all 48 government colleges and 13,000 primary schools.
• Despite limited resources, the Chief Minister said that he plans on giving utmost importance to school education by increasing the budget for the education sector.
• As part of this plan, there will be five new colleges built in the current year.
• The textbooks will be provided for free and will also be posted online which would help students and parents alike to download them free of cost.
• The state government further plans to pay extra attention to teaching in English, which is considered a weak point of government schools, by starting it as a pilot project in two primary, middle, high and senior secondary schools.

Analysis :

• According to the census of India 2011, the literacy rate in Punjab is 75.84% which is better than the national average of 73.0%. The total number of literates in Punjab is 1,87,07,137. The male literacy rate is 80.44% and female literacy rate is 70.73% which is very less than as compared to males.
• Education empowers everyone and seems like Punjab is all set to prepare its women to take on the world.
• While the public education system still isn't the best in our country, a new initiative by the Punjab government gives us hope.
• As only the privileged are able to send their kids to good schools while the lesser fortunate kids are deprived of quality education. The Punjab government has taken this initiative to level this out and give an opportunity of good education to everyone.
• It is also noteworthy to mention that Punjab government has brought in a lot of social welfare schemes including waiving of loans up to 50,000 for the dalits and economically weaker and underprivileged sections of the population.
• The chief minister had kept up another poll promise by increasing reservation for women in local bodies to 50 percent from the existing 33 percent.
• All these schemes if properly implemented, would go a long way in helping girls get better lifestyles and secure means of livelihood.
   

By: Harman Sandhu