VIJAYAWADA: Reiterating that expenditure on revamping government schools under the Mana Badi Nadu Nedu Scheme as human capital investment to ensure a bright future to children, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy lambasted the Opposition TDP for describing it as an excess spending and attributing political motives.
Concluding the short discussion on ‘Vidya Vaidyam - Nadu Nedu’ in the State Legislative Assembly on the penultimate day of the ongoing session on Tuesday, he said when the YSRC came to power, the government school infrastructure was in shambles with the previous TDP regime doing everything to render it a waste with vested interests of promoting corporate schools that benefits a few. “This resulted in the increase in the number of school dropouts and the previous regime was least bothered about it. We decided to change it all and our three years of efforts have started yielding results,” he said.
To buttress his argument, he made a presentation on the makeover of a Mandal Parishad school at Naravaripalle, the native village of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, and the government school in Kuppam, the Assembly constituency represented by the Opposition Leader. Both the schools, which were in a dilapidated condition three years ago, have now transformed into model schools with better infrastructure.
“The world is changing, so are its needs. Today we are in 2022 and what will be the educational needs of 2040?. The entire world is coming up with policies to meet the challenges ahead. Unfortunately, when we came to power, the education system of 1950s was still in vogue and the government schools were totally neglected. The main challenge before us was how to change the education system to ensure a better future to our children and what need to be done for shaping the next generation into confident and competent youth. Our answer is Nadu-Nedu and a plethora of educational reforms that followed,” he explained.
Jagan lashed out at his predecessor for neglecting the importance of English medium education, CBSE syllabus, mid-day meal programme, supply of school books and basic amenities in schools. “They even failed to construct toilets for girl students. All their focus was only on supporting a few corporate schools,” he alleged.
The State government has been striving not just for right to education but for right to English medium and right to higher education with incentives from pre-primary to college education while the previous dispensation had tried to push back the government schools into oblivion to benefit corporate schools, he alleged.
“We have chalked out our priorities well and wanted to see that the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is drastically improved by providing incentives and also revamping the schools under Nadu-Nedu. We have instructed that 12 visible changes be in place in the government schools, which include toilets, clean drinking water, repairs, tube lights and fans, furniture for students and teachers, green chalkboards, paintings, English lab, compound wall, kitchen shed, additional classrooms and digital interactive panels,” the Chief Minister said.
Even pre-primary schools and Anganwadi centres are also being developed under Nadu-Nedu. In the first phase, 15,715 schools were revamped at a cost of Rs 3,700 crore. The digitisation of classrooms will be in place from next academic year. Under the second phase of Nadu-Nedu, 22,344 schools will be revamped, including 16,911 unique schools. The student strength in the government schools has increased to 44.29 lakh in 2021-22 from 37.20 lakh in 2018-19, he highlighted.
On educational schemes, he said Amma Vodi is a unique one under which the mother is incentivised to send her children to school with the provision of Rs 15,000 aid per annum with the rider of 75% attendance and Rs 1,000 each should be contributed toward the school maintenance fund. A total of Rs 19,617 crore has been spent under the scheme in the last three years. Under Goru Muddha, the State has been spending Rs 1,800 crore, while the expenditure was just Rs 450 crore per annum during the previous government, which did not clear the dues of ayahs, he said.
Vidya Kanuka kits are being given to students on the school reopening day itself, which cost `886 crore. For Class eight students and teachers 5.18 lakh tabs will be given in the last week of November. The tabs will be pre-loaded with Byju’s content, which serves as a home tutorial. Vidya Deevena is the other incentive where the full fee reimbursement is given along with Vasathi Devena which takes care of the hostel and mess charges and the total amount works out to be Rs 11,717 crore, he highlighted.