6,700 adult education centres to be set up in state

Updated on: Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Pune: More than 6,700 adult education centres will be established in village panchayats with less than 50% female literacy, across nine districts of Marathwada and Vidarbha regions in the state as part of Saakshar Bharat', a centre-funded programme.

The Pune-based State Resource Centre (SRC), a fully-sponsored organisation of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), will drive the programme in coordination with its counterpart in Aurangabad. SRCs are responsible for extending academic and technical support, including basic books referred as primers; teachers' guidance, training and e-learning material to all initiatives under the National Literacy Mission (NLM).

'A latest directive by the HRD ministry states that one of the two coordinators proposed for each of the AECs will have to be a woman candidate selected by the village panchayat's education committee,' Bavale informed.

Considering that 6,762 AECs will be set up in phase I of the programme, the total number of coordinators to be engaged for running these centres will be 13,524 and half of these will be women, he said, adding, all coordinators will be trained by the SRCs.

The level of literacy in India, according to the 2001 Census, is a little over 65%. Moreover, the literacy gap between male and female in the 15-plus age group remains fairly high as female literacy is just 54%.
Recognising the need for a stringent literacy drive through a strategic mission, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh launched the Saakshar Bharat' programme on September 8, the International Literacy Day. The prime objective of this programme is to raise India's literacy level to 80%; reduce male-female literacy gap to 10% and minimise regional disparities, all by March 2012. This would require training seven crore people to read, write and acquire basic arithmetic calculation.

Six crore of the total targeted population under the programme consists of women, while special focus will be laid on scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and Muslim learners. The programme will be implemented through NLM and its implementing arms in the states, that is, the SRCs and the literacy missions of the respective states.

Bavale, who made an elaborate presentation on Saakshar Bharat at a workshop on women's literacy here on Sunday, told this reporter that the ministry has forwarded the action plan for eight of the nine specified districts in Maharashtra and the process for establishing the AECs would commence soon.

He said, phase-I of the programme (2009-10) will initially cover 50 to 55 districts, followed by another 135-140 districts and 170-175 districts in phases II (2010-11) and III (2011-12), respectively. "However, the ministry issued a directive last week that the phase-I coverage will be doubled to almost 110 districts," he added

6,700 adult education centres to be set up in state

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