Kadiyam refutes Congress charges against education

Hyderabad: Deputy Chief Minister Kadiyam Srihari on Thursday rebutted the charges made by Congress that primary education in the State was given a raw deal resulting in the falling standards of education.

Responding to a question raised by Congress MLAs Ch Vamsi Chand Reddy and S A Sampath during the question hour in the assembly on Thursday, the Minister admitted that more efforts should be made to improve the standards of education at Primary to High School level.

He said that the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) by Pratham, a non-government organisation, had indeed acknowledged the increase in enrollment of students from class I to III in the last two years.

The State had come under appreciation for improved performance, along with few other States like Punjab, in the country. And, the overall performance of the State showed a 7 per cent improvement since 2014, he said.

Srihari said that decision has been taken to convert the Anganwadi Centres with adequate space into play schools and primary schools. He said that the State government had taken a decision to fill up 15,268 teacher posts, which include vacancies of the newly proposed 529 residential schools and the government run schools.

Special efforts have been made to encourage girl’s education in the State. He further added that 300 residential schools in the newly proposed 529 schools had been earmarked for girls.

The Congress MLAs citied that the ASER had expressed concern over the falling standards among the students in the primary to high school levels. Vamsi Chand Reddy said that the reading and the arithmetic abilities of the students of classes 3, 5,6 and 8 have drastically come down and asked the government to figure out the reasons for the same to take corrective measures. He demanded that the vacant teacher posts be filled up immediately.