Madhya Pradesh State Education Summit Addresses Gaps in the Education Sector

Madhya Pradesh State Education Summit Addresses Gaps in the Education Sector

R to L: Shri Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dr Veera Gupta, Lokesh Mehra, Ritu Ghosh lighting the lamp at the inauguration of the State Education Summit 2012

The summit discussed various issues, challenges and best practices that prevail in the education sector

“The Madhya Pradesh government is committed to give a technological boost to the education sector with the objective of helping students passing out from different institutions in the state, stand solidly in the competitive world,” said Shri Kailash Vijayvargiya, Minister of Information Technology, Government of Madhya Pradesh, while inaugurating the Madhya Pradesh State Education Summit 2012 at Indore 2012 on 19th December, 2012.

Shri Vijayvargiya said that the state has been emerging as a destination for education. The summit was convened with the objective of deliberating on regional concerns and challenges in diverse areas of education.

The state has the potential to fulfill the future requirements of the knowledge economy. Its youth can become the fountainhead for boosting the Centre’s agenda of creating 200 million skilled workforces by the year 2020, the Minister added.

For this, various educational programmes have been undertaken. The state is witnessing significant growth in engineering, telecom networks, and other industries. Yet, the challenges and gaps in industry and academia persist.

However, achieving quality and universalisation of education remains a challenge for the state. We are adopting a multi-dimensional approach to improve the quality and inclusion in higher education. We are starting a large number of colleges in rural areas to make higher education accessible to people there. We have opened about 20-25 colleges in the past one year, and have about 15 more in the pipeline, he said.

“Conferences like the State Education Summit act as a platform for knowledge exchange, and sharing of the best practices and ideas to address the gaps and challenges of the state’s education sector,” the minister said.

The consortium brought together thought leadership from across the country to focus on the development of the state.

Speaking on the occasion, the Information Technology Department Secretary of the State, Hariranjan Rao said, ICT has become an integral part of our education system and new solutions are coming up to keep the education sector updated. He said virtual classrooms can play an important role in bridging the digital divide in our country, and in making quality education accessible to students living in remote areas.

The summit had parallel sessions on higher and school education and was attended by eminent personalities in the education sector, thinktanks, academicians, policymakers, educational institutions’ heads and students, and others, discussing the various issues, challenges and best practices in the education sector.

In the inaugural session, a host of speakers including Lokesh Mehra, Director-Education Advocacy, Microsoft; Dr Veera Gupta, Former Secretary, CBSE & Associate Professor, National University for Education Planning & Administration (NUEPA); Dr Michael Harnar, Mosaic Network, US; Ritu Ghosh,
Head-Education Initiatives, Hewlett Packard; Suresh Mhatre, Vice President, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS); Vikram Kant Upadhyay, President, Team India & Board Member, Indian Angel Network; and Dr Basheerhamad Shadrach, Country Director, TESS -India, Open University, UK, expressed
their views.

The parallel pre-lunch sessions on school education and higher education enlightened the education stakeholders where a large number of domain experts participated. All those who have excelled in different areas of the education sector were awarded the Shiksha Ratna during the concluding ceremony of the event.

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