New Delhi: All Government-aided Secondary and Higher Secondary schools will be soon equipped with hi-tech facilities including Camcorders, LCD projectors, more computers in the lab, Gensets in power-supply-affected areas and more than one lakh newly appointed teachers.

All these will be brought out by the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry in its Rs.6000 crore plan.

The HRD Ministry is also putting together a revamped ICT scheme for all 1.8 lakh secondary schools and higher secondary schools. Under the scheme, school children will be taught Word Processing, PowerPoint, and Spreadsheets etc. to keep them abreast with the latest developments in field of computer-aided education.

The HRD Ministry is not only introducing hi-technologies in the schools but is also trying to employ qualified teachers in the schools.

The scheme, to be spread out over the 11th Plan period, will get an allocation of Rs.5500 crores as Rs.500 crores has already been used to enhance the laboratory and hardware facilities in over 20,000 schools.

It will be implemented on a 75:25 Centre-State sharing basis and the other 90:10 sharing basis for a special category of states in the North-East, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand.

Each school will get approximately Rs.7.65 lakhs per annum under the scheme.

The HRD Ministry has said that at present, getting dedicated teachers is a major thrust area as most schools have teachers with only basic computer skills.

Under the scheme, teachers will be recruited at a salary of Rs.10000 per month at least for classes 9th to 12th.

The ministry added that it is open to the idea of Public Private Partnership (PPP) on a five-year Build-Operate-Own-Transfer (BOOT) model as is done by various state governments.