School education has been given the highest allocation of over Rs.10,000 crore in the State budget for 2010-2011, K. Gnanadesikan, Principal Secretary (Finance), said on Friday.
Responding to reporters' queries on the proposals, he said under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rs.540 crore had been allocated. Works for infrastructure facilities had been taken up at an estimated cost of Rs.767 crore with assistance from the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), benefiting 850 government high schools and higher secondary schools.
To a question on the implementation of the scheme of exemption of tuition fee for first-generation students of professional courses, Mr. Gnanadesikan said students, who secured admission through single window, were required to give a self declaration, which would have to be certified by local revenue authorities.
Earlier, presenting the budget in the Assembly, Finance Minister K. Anbazhagan said the proposed Anna University of Technology in Madurai would cover engineering colleges in Madurai, Dindigul, Theni, Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga districts from the coming financial year. With this announcement in the State budget, there would be five universities of the name following the 2007 split of the university into four with headquarters in Chennai, Tiruchi, Coimbatore and Tirunelveli.
The government also announced the setting up of a medical college at Tiruvannamalai and four new government arts and science colleges in Pudukottai, Theni, Tiruvannamalai and Villupuram districts with Central assistance. It will also be used to start seven new polytechnic colleges in the coming year.
The government announced a postgraduate extension centre of Thiruvalluvar University at Villupuram and the establishment of a centre of excellence at Manonmaniam Sundaranar University.
Of the Rs.1,751 crore allocated for the Higher Education Department, Rs.93 crore would be spent on constructing buildings for new engineering colleges started in Panruti, Thanjavur, Dindigul, Tuticorin and Kanyakumari. Fifty classrooms would be constructed in engineering and polytechnic colleges at a cost of Rs.3 crore and Rs.3.89 crore spent on construction of laboratories and development of infrastructural facilities in government arts and science colleges.
Dictionaries
Ninth standard students in government and government-aided schools would be provided English-English-Tamil dictionaries free of cost through the Tamil Nadu Textbook Corporation.
The government would provide computers to 2,000 middle schools in the coming year and had allocated Rs.50 crore for the purpose.
Two hundred middle schools would be upgraded as high schools and 125 high schools as higher secondary schools. Infrastructure facilities would be upgraded in 850 government high and higher secondary schools with NABARD support and maintenance works taken up in primary and middle schools at a cost of Rs.266 crore.
The State would bear 45 per cent of expenditure under the SSA. New high schools and middle schools would be established under the National Scheme for Development of Secondary Education and Rs.150 crore had been allocated for the scheme.
New textbooks under the common syllabus would be introduced for standards I and VI under the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of Education.
In the succeeding year the common syllabus would be extended to other classes, Mr. Anbazhagan said.
