To take forward progressive agenda of imparting free and quality education to the poor but meritorious students the Punjab government is all set to start academics in three new Residential schools for meritorious students at Sangrur, Ferozepur and Gurdaspur.
Existing seven meritorious schools have already being imparting free education to the 4850 students of the state. These existing meritorious schools have been built in the recent past with the cost of Rs. 258.17 crore.
With the commencement of three new such schools the Punjab state would become the first state of the country which has been successfully running meritorious schools to impart free education to the poor and brilliant students. The facilities extended to brilliant students in this schools included free hostel, food and special coaching for the competitive examination.
This ambitious project was envisaged by Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister, Punjab and from the academic session 2014-15 six residential senior secondary meritorious schools started education at Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Patiala, Bathinda and SAS Nagar (Mohali).
In each of the school student strength were fixed 600 students of 11th and 12th standard students for Medical, Non Medical and Commerce streams. The 7th meritorious school was set up at Talwara (Hoshiarpur) from the academic session 2015-16 for only Arts stream.
Speaking about the project the Education Minister Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema informed that these schools would be established on the pattern of already existing seven such meritorious schools. These schools were not only imparting academic education but also providing coaching to students for the competition exams, communication skills etc. so as to compete at par with their peers from public and convent schools.