Delegates at the CII meet in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, June 16: Bihar is in “desperate” need of secondary schools as many children passing out of elementary schools do not get a chance to study further.

Human resource development (HRD) department principal secretary Anjani Kumar Singh today said the Bihar government wants to build 4,000 additional secondary schools on public-private partnership (PPP). He said the state government wants to accommodate more students who pass out of elementary school into secondary schools.

“We have 74,000 elementary schools and 4,000 secondary schools and we desperately need another 4,000 secondary schools. For this, we are encouraging private parties to set up the schools on PPP mode,” Singh said, while addressing a seminar titled “Building People Building Organisation”, organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Bihar.

While explaining the problems in recruiting trained teachers according to the National Council For Technical Education (NCTE) norms, Singh said: “Another three lakh trained teachers have to be recruited in the near future. According to the NCTE norms, they must be trained. But given the conditions, out of three lakh teachers, about 2.5 lakh teachers will be untrained because we did not have training colleges and institutes to impart training because of the policy of recruiting untrained teachers by the previous state government.”

Singh said the government would make basic schools in every block as model schools, which would be residential.

Citing a recent survey report, the HRD’s top official said while 80 per cent teachers were present in their classrooms only 50 to 55 per cent students turned up in their classes. “We are going to make attendance as non-negotiable. Teachers must have information about the reason behind the absence of their students.”

Singh asserted that the state could be developed only by developing its human resources through proper training and skill deve- lopment.

“Bihar can be developed only by developing its large pool of talent. There is no other way to compare us to other states, which are rich in minerals and are industrially developed. Not many industries are coming to Bihar in the near future and hence we have to develop the state as an education hub on the back of our strength of human resources,” Singh said.

Even though he maintained that human beings are a resource, Singh said: “In my view, human resources are not a resource like any other resources. We are going to change our department’s name as education department, which is much more appropriate and common.”