After the partition of the country in 1947, the
Punjab Education Department functioned from a camp office set up in
Shimla’s Metropole Hotel. At that time, the Education Secretary was also
Director of Public Instruction. On February 15, 1959, the office was
shifted to Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab. In 1966, when the
southern districts of Punjab were constituted as the new state of
Haryana, the department was reorganised with some staff going to the new
state. At present, four Directorates function under the Punjab Education
Department, namely the Directorate of Public Instruction, (Colleges),
Directorate of Secondary Education, Directorate of Primary Education and
Directorate of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).
With growing pace of industrialization in Punjab, the
main stress has been on expansion, modernisation and reorientation of
Technical Education and Industrial Training system so as to match it
with emerging technologies for ensuring quality manpower availability to
the industrial sector. The basic objective is to produce Engineers,
Technicians and Craftsmen who are welcomed as assets by the Industry of
world class capability. For this purpose, besides opening up new
Engineering colleges, Polytechnics and Industrial training in the
emerging areas, the existing institutions are being modernized by
providing new equipment and machinery with the assistance of World Bank
as also the State Government. To consolidate the development in
these fields, a new full fledge 'Punjab Technical University' at
Jalandhar has been established.
Apart from technical institutes
the state has a large network of colleges and schools which has been
necessary over a period of time depending on the needs.
In
1996-97 enrollment of primary school children from class I to V is as
depicted below :-
| Year
1995-96 |
Boys |
Girls |
Total |
| Govt.
Schools |
809730 |
780439 |
1590169 |
| Un-recognised Schools |
255057 |
196441 |
451498 |
| Recognised
Schools |
105391 |
71874 |
177265 |
| Total |
1170178 |
1048754 |
2218932 |
| No of
Scheduled Cast Students |
382512 |
348989 |
731501 |
