Chennai: To increase the enrolment of girls in top engineering colleges across the country, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to provide free online resources, tutorials, lectures and study materials to girl students of classes 11 and 12 to prepare them for admission tests through a special scheme, called ‘Udaan’.
This scheme comes with an attractive package for students as their marks will get converted into reward points, which they can redeem as fees in the IITs and NITs.
Initially, the CBSE will admit 1,000 students of which 50 per cent will be earmarked for students of SC/ST/backward classes under this scheme.
CBSE chairman Vineet Joshi said that girls were under-represented in higher education, with those from marginal socio economic sections being at a greater disadvantage.
“Since closing the gender gap in the education is an important benchmark of development, Udaan will help do so by improving the socio-economic status of girls through increased participation in professional and higher education,” he said. This scheme could also lead them to leadership roles later.
Welcoming the Udaan initiative, K. Shanthi, a class 10 student of a private CBSE school, who comes from a lower economic background, said that the new scheme would be of help to students like her who could not afford the expensive technical education in top colleges in the country.
“Even though I score top scores I need at least '50,000 per year to pay fees: that is, a total of '2 lakh as fees for the entire programme. Now it is good that the government will take the burden with Udaan scheme, I am relieved,” she said.
