The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), established by an Act of Parliament in 1985, has continuously striven to build an inclusive knowledge society through inclusive education. It has tried to increase the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) by offering high quality teaching through Open and Distance Learning (ODL) mode.  

As per the mandate of the University, we strives to: provide access to higher education to all segments of the society; offer high – quality, innovative and need – based programmes at different levels; and empower the variously disadvantaged by offering programmes in all parts of the country at affordable cost.

 

Today, the University serves the educational aspirations of over three million students in India and 43 other countries through 21 Schools of Studies and a network of 67 Regional Centres, over 3400 Learner Support Centres. The University offers 123 certificate, diploma, post graduate diploma, degree and doctoral programmes with the strength of nearly 600 faculty members and academic staff at the headquarters and Regional Centres and about 54,200 academic counselors drawn from conventional institutions of higher learning, professional organizations, and industry among other.

 

 

In order to cater to the educational needs of the disadvantaged sections of the society, especially the tribes of Madhya Pradesh, the University established a Regional Centre at Jabalpur in July 2005. However, initially this office has worked as a Sub-Regional Centre under RC Bhopal during the period of March 2004 to July 2005.

 

Total thirteen districts of Madhya Pradesh, all of them on the eastern part of the state and mostly dominated by the tribal population were kept under the operational area of IGNOU Regional Centre, Jabalpur. These districts were Jabalpur, Narsinghpur, Balaghat, Seoni, Chhindwara, Katni, Shahdol, Umariya, Anuppur, Sidhi, Singrauli, Dindori and Mandla. In the year 2013, districts namely Rewa, Satna, Panna, Damoh, Sagar, Chhatarpur and Tikamgarh had also been put under the operational area of IGNOU Regional Centre, Jabalpur. Thus, as present total 20 no. of districts comes under the jurisdiction of RC Jabalpur.

 

The population as per Census 2011 of these 20 districts of Madhya Pradesh is 2,89,93,519 persons. Out of them 1,49,55,232 male and 1,40,38,278 are female. Catering to the educational needs of this huge population is a great challenge since it sparsely distributed poor transport network, low per capita income and extremely low penetration of technology in the region. We are also providing academic support to the tribal learners of remote area through mobile study centres.

 

 

The Regional Centre has established Study Centres in almost all districts falling under its operational area, except of districst Umaria, Panna & Sidhi. The constant efforts towards this is being taken from RC, we are optimist that same would be established in near future. 

 

Providing high - quality education has been the main objective of IGNOU Regional Centre, Jabalpur. Perfect monitoring mechanism, quality check systems and feedback mechanisms have been evolved to achieve this.