The government has approved the proposal put forth by the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) to open more junior colleges in the private sector. Interestingly, it has not proposed even a single government college in the State.
The government has issued a GO (Rt No. 419), dated May 6, 2008, allowing BIE to issue notification for establishment of 842 new private unaided junior colleges in 587 identified Mandals and 784 junior colleges in 74 Municipalities. BIE is expected to issue a notification inviting applications next week.
Currently, there are 4,088 junior colleges in the State, of which only 711 are government-run and 150 are government-aided. The remaining 3,227 colleges are run by private managements.
However, various associations of junior lecturers of government colleges have strongly protested the move and alleged that the State is conspiring to close down government junior colleges by encouraging more and more number of pri vate colleges every year.
They said while the department of school education is strengthening 6,500 government schools through an investment of over Rs 9,500 crore, the BIE has not initiated any steps so far in this direction, though government colleges are performing better.
Government colleges continued to improve their performance in the Intermediate results with increased pass percentage for the third consecutive year. Out of the 1,01,259 candidates who appeared for the examination this year, 55,133 passed registering 54.45 per cent success. Last year the pass percentage was 52.12 per cent.
The is same with governmentaided colleges which improved their performance, with the pass percentage rising from 53.39 per cent to 53.53 per cent. However, it is considerably high compared to 51.69 per cent recorded in 2006.