Free Coaching for Minorities and Girls

http://www.ummid.com/news/august/16.08.2009/free_ coaching_classes_for_ minorities_ girls.htm

New Delhi: The Government is set to announce a residential coaching scheme for minority students towards effecting a radical improvement in their employment and representation in government and industry — one of the objectives laid down in the Sachar Committee report on improving the state of minorities.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry will soon roll out an ambitious scheme that envisages coaching for all government examinations — from Civil Services to state-level examinations — for minority students selected after an all-India merit test.

The scheme will be announced soon and sources said efforts are on to have it included in the Prime Minister’s speech on Independence Day.

“The idea is to train students to crack every major exam from IAS to IIT. While Phase I will see five universities starting the coaching programmes, Phase II will extend it to 10 other universities. While the coaching will be free, there may be a nominal charge for residential facilities,”said an official.

Keen to get the scheme launched, the HRD Ministry will open Academies of Minority Coaching in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in Uttar Pradesh, Jamia Hamdard University in Delhi, Maulana Azad Urdu University in Hyderabad and the Ambedkar University this year itself. As many as 200 students will be enrolled. The coaching programmes will run from five weeks to a year depending on the examination.

The scheme, mooted by Kapil Sibal, was taken up on priority basis by HRD Secretary for Higher Education R P Agarwal who has already held discussions with the Vice Chancellors of these universities.

The HRD Ministry plans to expand the ambit of this scheme to include SC/STs and women among those eligible. In fact, the 10 other universities will be women universities. An estimated 40 per cent of those enrolled for this coaching should be women, as per the Ministry’s plans.

The residential coaching programme takes off from the Scheme of Coaching for SC/ST Students and Minority Community Candidates for National Education Testing (NET). While the UGC scheme was quite a non-starter, this scheme will be a far improved version.

Universities which will conduct this coaching will be provided some seed money and the freedom to employ their staff for the coaching classes besides inviting experts.