The number of students pursuing higher education in Tamil Nadu has increased considerably thanks to the State government’s special programmes and welfare initiatives to promote education, said K.C. Veeramani, Minister for School Education, here on Tuesday.
Inaugurating a three-day State-level Jawaharlal Nehru Science and Mathematics exhibition at the Government Higher Secondary School in Perambalur, Mr. Veeramani said the State government had been making huge investment in the education sector, especially school education.
Realising the importance of role of youths in achieving the goals of the Vision 2023, the Chief Minister had been implementing 14 welfare schemes for the benefit of school students.
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The free laptop scheme was one of the pioneering schemes implemented by the State government and although teams from many other States were visiting the Tamil Nadu to study the scheme, they had not been able to implement such a programme for more than a year. But the Tamil Nadu government had been implementing it.
In an attempt to encourage students to pursue higher education, the Chief Minister had implemented a scheme under which Rs. 5,000 was deposited in the names of students pursuing class 10 to 12 in government and government aided schools. On completion of Plus Two, the students are provided Rs. 6,500 so that they can join courses of higher studies.
The State government had appointed 72,556 teachers over the past four years to improve the standard of education.
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The results were showing and last year about 150 government higher secondary schools and 1,163 high schools had achieved cent per cent pass in the public examinations.
Perambalur district, which was once known to be backward in education, had made rapid strides in improving the pass percentage of students. Of the 32 students of government schools who had qualified for medical admission last year, five were from Perambalur district, he said.
Earlier, the Minister declared open the exhibition and went around the stalls. As many as 146 exhibits on the topics of health, forest management, industrial development, agriculture and food security, disaster management and mathematics are displayed at the exhibition.
Each district was represented by two individual exhibits, one two-member team exhibit, one science teacher’s exhibit and one mathematical exhibit.
Forest management had attracted the maximum entries with 42 exhibits, followed by 23 under industrial development and 18 under disaster management.
A touch screen kiosk providing details of various scientists and their inventions and discoveries formed part of the expo.
R. Tamilselvan, MLA, District Collector Darez Ahamed, and Superintendent of Police Sonal Chandra were present.