Calcutta, April 25: The state will soon have 28 higher secondary schools for the poor, especially tribals.

A dozen of them would come up this year itself, said backward classes welfare minister Upen Kisku. They would offer hostel facilities and tuition would be free of charge for those below poverty line.

?The residential facilities would be available for both teachers and students,? Kisku said. At least 75 per cent of the seats would be reserved for the tribals, 15 per cent for the Scheduled Castes, 5 per cent for the other backward classes, and the rest for other students. In the last category, 2 per cent of the seats would be reserved for the minorities.

?There will be 80 students in every class with two sections in each. All the schools would be co-educational,? a senior official of the backward classes welfare department said.

?Children from poor families need a lot of incentives to feel attracted to school. So the government has conceived of this project, which aims at providing them the basic necessities for schooling ? uniforms and books, boarding and food. Without all this, it would be difficult to draw them to schools,? the official added.

Plans are being drawn up to build three schools each in Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore. There will be two schools each in Burdwan, Hooghly, Birbhum, Murshidabad, Malda, the Dinajpurs, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. East Midnapore will have one school.

Officials would work through the zilla parishads to persuade the poor and tribal families to send their children to these schools.

?In addition to free education and boarding, the students would be given Rs 400 a month as stipend,? said another official of the department.

The government would bear the entire cost of running the schools and this means an additional annual expenditure of Rs 20-25 crore.

Kisku said the finance department has given consent to the project in principle.

The teachers would be appointed on contract.

Experience has shown that many tribal children show unusual brilliance and cry for that little extra care which can enable them to achieve a lot more. A social welfare official said: ?We hope that many more achievers will come up with these schools.?