Hyderabad, July 9 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh Government today proposed to introduce a series of reforms in public-funded higher education institutions, including bringing vocationalisation to the centrestage of Intermediate education.

The Government would involve the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and other professional bodies to prepare vocational courses to meet the needs of the Industry, State Higher Education Minister D Srinivas said while inaugurating a seminar on Intermediate Education here.

Reiterating the Government's decision to give 25 per cent weightage for marks scored by students in the Intermediate for admission professional courses from 2008-09, Mr Srinivas said the Government was mulling adoption of the core syllabus of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to enable the students to face competition at the national level.

Decrying the tendency of parents to see that their wards pursued a career either in medicine or engineering, the Minister called for an attitudinal change as the world offered a very large number of fields for the students.

As many as 530 junior lecturers posts would be filled by coming August and another 500 vacancies for the post of junior lecturers would be notified to the State Public Service Commission for recruiting them, he added.

Noting that institutional instruction to students was far less in public funded institutions as compared to private institutions, the Comissioner for Intermediate Education D Chakrapani said, class room instruction was being rescheduled in all government-aided colleges from 0900 hrs to enable the students to catch up with their counterparts in private institutions.

Experts in the field urged the government to bring the state syllubus on a par with the Central schools, form a separate Director for vocational education and training, as in Kerala and Karnataka.

UNI