Leveraging the Demographic Divide through Quality Education

Education is the only way of ensuring equity and success for all.

On November 13th 2009, the LMA convention was held at Lucknow. Its objective was to evolve innovative policies for a world class education in the state and build human resource capital by providing technological skills and training to the youth of Uttar Pradesh. Intel’s collaboration with the Government of Uttar Pradesh was commemorated at the event.

Guest of Honor of the event, The Honorable Governor of Uttar Pradesh, Mr. B. L. Joshi spoke on the “need for managing human resources and the requirement for innovative modification in curriculum with a balanced regulatory system which is transparent and accountable” . Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member of the Planning Commission, in his key note address expressed concern over the quality of education, which, he felt needed a lot of improvement. He was of the opinion, that while curriculum revision could be a step towards improving the quality, access to higher education also needed to be increased.

The Chief Secretary (UP) and Chairman of LMA advisory council, Shri. Atul Gupta, recommitted himself to improving the education scenario and stressed upon the need for public-private partnerships.

Presentations were also made by eminent experts from academics, business and government supported by successful case studies and experiences which would facilitate development of policies in different sectors in the country and the State. Everyone felt that the public-private partnership (PPP) model would help reducing the problems as would the introduction of more vocational training courses.

The general consensus was that the key to transforming our education system lies in liberalization of education, addressing its supply side matrix, enabling more choices to students and creating healthy competition among educational institutions to generate merit. This would initially require bold steps to dismantle archaic regulations that have generated artificial scarcity for quality education and spurred growth of shoddy institutions indulging in crass commercialization.

Intel & UP Government- an Update Intel Teach Program Intel has been collaborating with the government of Uttar Pradesh to focus on enhancing education by the introduction of ICT in the classroom teaching and learning process. Intel has trained more than 13000 private school teachers in schools all over UP. Intel Learn Program Program was launched in 2006 in UP and 3547 learners trained so far across 27 JNVs covering 27 districts of the state. Intel Higher Ed Program UP Technical University Lucknow and Intel has been working closely to integrate Intel Multicore curriculum in all 210+ Engineering colleges over the next two year period by training all the faculties and thus impacting more than 8000 students every year. Faculties from colleges affiliated to UP Technical University participated in workshops on Multi Core at IIT Kanpur in 2009. IIT Kanpur and Intel has a strategic tie-up to conduct research in areas like Multicore, VLSI and to offer faculty development programs for other engineering college faculties from all over India in area of Multi core technology. IIT Kanpur conducted a week long summer workshop on Multi Core technologies for selected faculties from engineering colleges across India. Intel IRIS Program The State Institute of Science Education, Allahabad affiliated to IRIS Program, has organised Teachers workshop in Allahabad touching 28 schools. There was a cluster workshop in Lucknow which involved students and teachers from 6 Schools.

Prof. Indiresan former director IIT Madras, stressed on the need for a job-oriented education and more training programs which should be made available for teachers.

Ms Valsa Williams, Head- North & East India, Corporate Affairs Group, Intel summed up the discussions by suggesting a sharing of responsibility between stakeholders including the government, private sector, academia and civil society. She also shared the various initiatives taken by Intel under its Educational Initiatives with the State Government, private & public schools, universities, engineering institutions and the community.

Mr Rahul Bedi, Director, Corporate Affairs Group, Intel, in his valedictory address reaffirmed that education could have meaning only when students understand its application in real life. Application of knowledge he said, is the key to success in knowledge economy.