After the partition of India in 1947, the Punjab Education Department functioned from a camp office set up in Shimla’s Metropole Hotel. At that time, the Education Secretary was also Director of Public Instruction. On February 15, 1959, the office was shifted to Chandigarh, the new capital of Punjab. In 1966, when the southern districts of Punjab were constituted as the new state of Haryana, the department was reorganised with some staff going to the new state.

At present, four directorates function under the Punjab Education Department, namely the Directorate of Public Instruction (colleges), Directorate of Secondary Education, Directorate of Primary Education and Directorate of State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

With growing pace of industrialisation in Punjab, the main stress has been on expansion, modernisation and reorientation of technical education and Industrial Training system to match it with emerging technologies and for ensuring quality manpower to the industrial sector.

The basic objective is to produce engineers, technicians and craftsmen who are welcomed as assets by the industry of world class capability. For this purpose, besides opening up new engineering colleges, polytechnics and industrial training in the emerging areas, the existing institutions are being modernised by providing new equipment and machinery with the assistance of World Bank as also the State government.

To consolidate the development in these fields, a new full-fledged Punjab Technical University at Jalandhar has been established.

Apart from technical institutes the state has a large network of colleges and schools, which has been necessary over a period of time depending on the needs.