Observing that education is the 'most favoured sector', Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday the outlay on education will be up from 7.68 per cent of the Central Gross Budgetary Support in the 10th Plan to over 19 per cent in the 11th Plan.
In fact, education is the most favoured sector and the three fold increase in its share and a five fold increase in the actual outlays demonstrate the criticality of this sector in ensuring sustained inclusive growth in the future," he told the National Development Council meeting to approve the XIth Five Year plan.
Singh said the country needed a greatly expanded supply of educated and skilled labour to support ambitious growth targets.
Education is also our best hope for achieving inclusiveness and for spreading development to backward regions and marginalised groups," he said, adding nothing would ensure an effective spread of opportunity to all sections of the population more than the availability of good quality education especially in
rural areas.
The prime minister said the XIth Plan attempts to bring about a massive transformation in the area of education through many new initiatives.
While strengthening the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, a new scheme for universalising secondary education was proposed, he said.
During the Plan period 6,000 model schools in all blocks, 30 new Central Universities, 370 new colleges in educationally backward districts, a Skill Development Mission to cater to one crore students per year and a huge expansion in the number of IIT, IIM, Indian Institutes of Information Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research are proposed, Singh said.
"This is a decisive start to bridging the knowledge gap in our country,"he said.
All these ambitious investments would bear fruit only if the Central and State governments work purposefully to see that results are in line with expectations and that the quality of these institutions remains top-class, the prime minister said.
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