New Delhi, Nov 11 (IANS) Getting talented faculty members for premier institutes was a problem, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Wednesday, and emphasised that the government was committed to strengthening and expanding quality education system in the country.
“The importance of good teachers cannot be over-emphasised. We must find ways and means of improving the quality of our teachers. We must find ways of attracting the best talent as faculty in our premier institutions,” Manmohan Singh said.

He was addressing the National Education Day function here to commemorate the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, independent India’s first education minister.

“We face difficulty in finding top level professors and lecturers in the newly created (Indian Institutes of Technology) IITs, (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) IISERs and other such institutions,” the prime said.

“The state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist and I urge all of you to work to address these problems of deficiency in the quality of teaching in our schools, in our colleges and in our universities,” he said.

The government has sanctioned the setting up six new Indian Institutes of Management (IIM), 10 National Institutes of Technology (NIT), 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and 6,000 model schools across the country.

“Improving access to education is not enough,” the prime minister said, asserting that it should be accompanied by efforts to improve quality.

“Improvement in quality at all levels is also receiving increasing emphasis. In higher education, this will be achieved through structural reforms on the basis of the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission and the Yashpal Committee.

“Our government stands committed to provide good and quality education to each and every child in our country, especially those who belong to the underprivileged sections of our society.”

Manmohan Singh paid tribute to the first education minister. Maulana Azad, he said, “was a great visionary, a great freedom fighter, a great scholar, an eminent educationist”.

“The celebration of Maulana Azad’s birth anniversary as the National Education Day is a befitting homage to one of our greatest leaders. Today is also an occasion when all of us should re-dedicate ourselves to the cause of education, and through it to building India as a modern, knowledge society,” he said.