Explain the First Five Year Plan for Education in India.

India’s First Five Year Plan attempts have been made to remodel the system, in such a way as to suit country needs better. The Planning Commission of India tried to reorganize education under the first five year plan. The following are the main point of consideration:

• Orientation of the educational system and integration of its different stages and branches,
• Expansion in various fields, especially in those of basic and social education, modeled secondary education and technical and vocational education,
• Consolidation of existing secondary and university education and the devising of a system of higher education suited to the needs of the rural areas,
• Expansion of facilities for women’s education, especially in the rural areas,
• Training of teachers, especially women teachers and teachers for basic schools, and improvement in their pay-scales and conditions of service, and
• Helping backward States by giving preferential treatment to them in the matter of grants.

The Central Planning Commission recommended that basic education should be expanded as primary education. For this purpose, under the first five year following schemes are formulated:

Basic schools should be opened, or existing primary schools converted into basic schools, preferably in those places where the local inhabitants are prepared to donate at least five acres of land and the local community, or the State, provides initial equipment and other capital expenditure.

The experience of Bihar, where basic education has been given a comparatively fair trial over some period, proves that gifts of land for basic schools can be easily secured. The social education programs of the State Governments can prepare ground for such donations,

Wherever Government land is available or where Government come into possession of land, such as by the abolition of Zamindari estates, basic institutions should have a prior claim in the surplus land.

All Government demonstration farms should be used for training the staff of basic institutions.

Wherever consolidation of holdings is undertaken, the needs of the local school for land should be taken into consideration in determining the extent of land to be reserved for the common needs of the village.

Government should simplify procedure for the transfer of land and provide the schools with necessary facilities and cooperation of the agricultural department for improving the land offered,

Where land is not obtainable under any condition it may be rented.