Punjab Government to give free education to girls till PhD

India: To make education more accessible to girls, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has announced free education for girls, from kindergarten to doctorate, in Government institutions.

He made the announcement this week while speaking in the Vidhan Sabha, according to The Hindustan Times. Along with that, there are also plans to give free textbooks to students from Government schools and free Wi-Fi for all Government colleges and 13,000 primary schools.

Despite limited resources, the Chief Minister said that he plans on giving utmost importance to school education by increasing the budget for the education sector. As part of this plan, there will be five new colleges built in the current year.

This is an attempt at bridging the gap between rich people getting all privileges and poor ones being left with limited access to resources.

The textbooks will be provided for free and will also be posted online which would help students and parents alike to download them free of cost.

The Government also has plans to offer English as a medium of instruction in government schools. To do this, initially, two schools at all levels from every block will have English medium from July.

It is also noteworthy to mention that the Punjab Government has brought in a lot of social welfare schemes including waiving of loans up to 50,000 for the dalits and economically weaker and underprivileged sections of the population. Adding to that, the economically weaker section of the population would get housing at low cost wherein homeless people will get free houses, according to The New Indian Express.

Only last week, the Chief Minister had kept up another poll promise by increasing reservation for women in local bodies to 50% from the existing 33%. All these schemes if properly implemented, would go a long way in helping people get better lifestyles and secure means of livelihood.