Secondary education system in India

Secondary education

Older students

The National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986, has provided for environment awareness, science and technology education, and introduction of traditional elements such as Yoga into the Indian secondary school system.^[34] Secondary education covers children 14–18 which covers 88.5 million children according to the Census, 2001. However, enrolment figures show that only 31 million of these children were attending schools in 2001–02, which means that two-third of the population remained out of school.^[35]
A significant feature of India's secondary school system is the emphasis on inclusion of the disadvantaged sections of the society. Professionals from established institutes are often called to support in vocational training. Another feature of India's secondary school system is its emphasis on profession based vocational training to help students attain skills for finding a vocation of his/her choosing.^[36] A significant new feature has been the extension of SSA to secondary education in the form of the Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan^[37]
A special Integrated Education for Disabled Children (IEDC) programme was started in 1974 with a focus on primary education.^[19] but which was converted into Inclusive Education at Secondary Stage^[38] Another notable special programme, the Kendriya Vidyalaya project, was started for the employees of the central government of India, who are distributed throughout the country. The government started the Kendriya Vidyalaya project in 1965 to provide uniform education in institutions following the same syllabus at the same pace regardless of the location to which the employee's family has been transferred.^[19]
A multilingual web portal on Primary Education is available with rich multimedia content for children and forums to discuss on the Educational issues. India Development Gateway ^[39] is a nationwide initiative that seeks to facilitate rural empowerment through provision of responsive information, products and services in local languages.