Two-tier education system soon in State: Chandrababu

Vijayawada: Underlining the importance of transforming the State into a knowledge hub, Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu said at the camp office here on Thursday while addressing the Vice-Chancellors of all the 17 universities in the State. The Chief Minister appealed to the Vice-Chancellors to take a proactive role in achieving the dream of creating knowledge hub.

The Chief Minister announced that the present three tier system of education—primary, secondary and higher—would be replaced with two-tier system. ``The intermediate would be clubbed with the secondary education in this respect,” he said.

``Knowledge promotion should start from the universities,” the Chief Minister called upon the Vice-Chancellors urging them to introduce an exemplary programme to that effect. He said that the programme should be prepared in such a way that the 18 lakh students of the universities should be able to compete with the international institutions.

He announced that the programme would be named `Gnana Dhara’ which would give priority to continuous education, technology, skill development, and encouragement to startups and inventions.

The Gnana Dhara would commence from the third week of this month, he said and appealed to the Vice-Chancellors to suggest any better name for the programme.

Chandrababu Naidu suggested to Minister for Human Resources Development Ganta Srinivasa Rao to prepare the programme by consulting the specialists in various fields. Stating that he would directly address the 10,000 students, the Chief Minister said that the students should be selected by organising various competitions to participate in the programme.

The universities should organise exhibitions and workshops with noted personalities to encourage the students, he said and added that they could avail the help of CII and other associations in this regard. He said that a mobile application would be released to facilitate this event and the students could register through this app.

The Chief Mminister said that the event would commence on July 18 at Dr Ambedkar University in Srikakulam , at JNTU in VIzianagaram on August 2, at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam on August 17, at YSR Horticulture University in West Godavari on August 31, at Nannaya University in Rajamahendravaram on September 14, jointly for Krishna University in Machilipatnam and NTR University of Health Sciences in Vijayawada on September 30 and again jointly for the Nagarjuna University and NG Ranga University on October 12.

Special secretary Adityanath Das told the meeting that Andhra Pradesh stood in the fourth place in the country with 48 colleges for every one lakh population.``We have 27 universities, seven national prominence institutions in the State,” he pointed out. Principal secretaries B Udayalakshmi,  Ravat, CMO secretaries Rajamowli, Girija Sankar  and others were present.