IIT foundation course in govt schools from next year

Vijayawada: Human Resource Development Minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao said measures will be taken by the State government to introduce IIT foundation course in all the Zilla and Mandal Parishad High Schools across the State in a phased manner from the next academic year.
The Minister participated in an awareness programme on ‘IIT foundation course’ for the students and parents held here on Sunday. Speaking on the occasion, Srinivasa Rao said that, “There are 1,500 municipal schools in the State with an enrollment of 2.5 lakh students. Despite this, hardly any student from municipal schools topped in IIT or any other competitive examination. The percentage of students from municipal schools among them was zero due to lack of basic knowledge among them. Most of the corporate schools have started teaching the IIT basics from the sixth standard itself. So, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has instructed the officials of education department to incorporate the IIT foundation course in the regular curriculum from the eighth standard in municipal schools in the last academic year,” he added. The Minister said that buoyed by the tremendous response for the IIT foundation course in municipal schools, the State government has planned to introduce the course in Zilla and Mandal Parishad High Schools to enable the students to compete with the corporate school students. The government has decided to provide weightage for the teacher’s career in the next academic year and transfers would be done based on the merit, he said. Addressing the gathering, Minister for Municipal Administration P Narayana said that students who pursued their education in municipal schools were facing lot of difficulties in Intermediate and higher education due to lack of language and communication skills. To help them overcome the problem, this State government has introduced IIT foundation course for the students in municipal schools from class VIII to class X.
Majority of the students pursuing education in municipal schools hailed from the low and middle income groups, he said and added that with this foundation course they gained confidence to appear in the competitive examinations like IIT and JEE. The government was also focusing on developing the municipal schools and increasing the strength of students from 2.5 lakh to 5 lakh by 2018, he said.
Mayor Koneru Sreedhar, Education Committee chairman Nazir Hussain, VMC Additional Commissioner P Arun Babu, deputy education officer K Durga Prasad and other officials were present.