New Delhi, March 15 (IANS) The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) Monday announced new programmes which would focus on providing special education to people with hearing, visual and mental disability.

Speaking at the varsity's 21st convocation, Vice Chancellor V.N. Rajashekharan Pillai announced new post-graduate diploma and certificate programmes in special education in mental retardation, visual and hearing impairment. IGNOU has also launched a new sign language programme -- BA degree in applied sign linguistics -- due to start this year.

'Today, IGNOU has an impressive 2.5 million students, a national network of 61 regional centres, over 3,000 learner support centres and a presence in 36 countries. Over 636,000 students have enrolled with IGNOU (this academic year) -- a record for the university, making IGNOU a living testimony to social inclusion and democratization of education,' Pillai said.

This year around 133,624 were given their degrees, diplomas and certificates. Nearly 24,000 received these here in person, while gold medals were awarded to 66 students by Padma Bhushan awardee and former director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) S.K. Joshi, who was the chief guest for the event.

Joshi congratulated IGNOU and stressed the need for more universities, which are 'responsive to change, well-funded, better managed and have competent faculty'.

He said: 'It is heartening to know that 15 percent of the total number of higher education students are enrolled at IGNOU. With the passing of the Right to Education Act and effective working of the Sarva Shikhs Abhiyan, as well as the conomic growth of the country, we should expect an explosive growth in demand for higher education.'

He highlighted that higher education in India suffers from a variety of inequalities between social groups, urban-rural groups and based on gender.

IGNOU's open learning model of education, which is also the largest in the world, 'takes higher education to less privileged sections of society at a reasonable cost', he said.