Himachal to partner with UNESCO to reform education system: Rohit Thakur

The Himachal Pradesh government will collaborate with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to strengthen quality, equitable, and inclusive education for every child in the state, education minister Rohit Thakur said on Friday.

He said that the state government would soon sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with UNESCO by exploring potential areas of collaboration to further reform the education system up to a higher level. He chaired a meeting with a delegation from UNESCO on Friday.

The minister said that education had always been a top priority for this hilly state which was quite evident from the fact that today the literacy rate of the state stands more than 83% which was merely 7 % at the time of attaining the statehood status in 1971.

“The quality of education had declined to some extent in past few years, but the present state government had taken major reformative measures to improve the education quality which had started showing the encouraging results as was also evident in the recent national report,” said Thakur.

He said, “The government had allocated around 20% of its total budget for the education sector alone which clearly shows its commitment to bringing qualitative changes in this vital sector”.