Dr Ravi Gupta
Editor-in-Chief
Ravi.Gupta@elets.in
The Human Resource Development Minister, Dr M M Pallam Raju, has recently stated that India is to achieve 80 percent literacy rate by 2015. The current literacy rate of India is 73 percent as per the Census 2011. The Minister mentioned that more than 20 crore people have become literate since the last Census of 2001, out of which more than half of them are females. To achieve the goal of 80 percent literacy by 2015, the HRD Ministry is restructuring the entire adult education system in the country with a paradigm shift to lifelong education.
Dr Raju also announced that an appropriate administrative and legislative process shall be initiated to integrate formal, non-formal and informal learning and to recognise forms of education other than formal. He clarified that recognition, validation and accreditation of learning, obtained through adult education, will be formalised by setting up equivalency framework.
Raising the literacy rate by seven percent in the next two years is a mammoth task and all stakeholders in the education sector need to work in tandem to meet this target. Schools play a big role in this as they lay the foundation for education. This issue of digitalLEARNING has a Special Focus on emerging school chains, whereby owners of leading school chains in India have shared their experiences – challenges faced and lessons learnt – in running school chains in India.
The August issue of digitalLEARNING is a special issue that has covered different innovative projects submitted under the 9th eINDIA Education Summit scheduled to be held on 23-24th July, at Hyderabad International Convention Centre, Hyderabad. The issue features projects of innovation taken up in higher education and school education and acknowledges the various initiatives taken up by the government, educational institutions and the private sector for playing a stellar role in raising the standards and quality of education in the country.
I would also like to tell our readers that the August 2013 issue of digitalLEARNING will be launched by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh at the prestigious eINDIA 2013 Summit, being organised on 23-24 July, 2013 in Hyderabad, in the presence of many key officials from the Centre and States who are playing a stellar role in implementation of new education initiatives in the Country. If you are there at the eINDIA2013 summit, then you might already have received your copy of digitalLEARNING.
We look forward to seeing you at eINDIA 2013. After all, it is very essential that all sections of society participate in the discussions on the ways by which the scope of education can be further improved in the country. While we have scored lot of successes in this area, there exists room for lot of new initiatives to be launched.
