SCHOOL OF PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE

The School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada is one of three Schools of Planning and Architecture (SPAs) located across India, alongside institutes in Bhopal and New Delhi. These are centrally funded, autonomous public institutes of higher education under the Ministry of Education, Government of India, established to provide quality architecture and physical planning education, offering undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral, and executive programmes. The overall administration and strategy of all SPAs is overseen by the SPA Council, headed by India's Minister of Human Resource Development, with chairpersons and directors of all SPAs and senior ministry officials as members. The Vijayawada institute was established after the Ministry of Human Resource Development requested a project report from the Institute of Town Planners, India (ITPI), for setting up new Schools of Planning & Architecture; based on this report, the government decided to establish two new SPAs, one in Bhopal and one in Vijayawada. Admission to undergraduate programmes across SPAs is through the Joint Entrance Examination - Main, while postgraduate admissions involve interviews and the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering. The institute also follows an affirmative action policy on caste-based reserved quotas as per the Indian constitution.