The Department of Education (DoE) has opted for grade teacher concept in government primary schools to make the enrollment sustainable and fruitful for the students in community schools from the new academic session.

The DoE Director General (DG) Lav Dev Awasthi said that the government plan aims to make teachers more accountable in the community schools that are losing students, who often complain about declining quality compared to private and boarding schools.

Under the new system, for each grade there would be one teacher who would teach all subjects.

The DoE said that a circular has been sent to all schools across the country to arrange grade teachers for students of grades 1, 2 and 3.

Similarly, the teachers will have to compulsorily prepare their own half yearly and yearly progress report while preparing the students´ report from the new academic session.

The DoE Director Tek Narayan Pandey mentioned that the government school teachers would be tightly monitored and evaluated based on the achievements of their students.

Neither has the government tried to hold teachers accountable nor have the teachers attempted to apply new teaching techniques, which are the major causes behind the decreasing charm of public schools, added Pandey.

“From now onwards, the district education offices will have to prepare progress reports of both students and teachers from each schools and submit to the Department of Education. If students score poor marks in a particular subject, the teacher in question would be given warnings to improve their teaching techniques. We will provide them training if they need it,” Pandey claimed.

The government can cut grants to schools that fail to show improvements over time.

The education department is all set to begin its school enrolment campaign in government schools across the country from next week. The campaign targets to rope in more than 600,000 children below 14 years of age for primary education.

The report jointly published by the government and UNICEF on January 17 stated that around 13 percent children in eight districts of Tarai are out of school.

As many as 189,000 children between 5 and 15 years are out of school, whereas 1.3 million are enrolled in schools from grade one to nine in the eight worst performing districts: Bara, Dhanusha, Mohattari, Sarlahi, Kapilvastu, Rupandehi, Nawalparasi, Sirha and Rautahat.

The children of school-going age would be enrolled in government schools by convincing their guardians through a door-to-door program, said Pandey. At least 67,000 students need to be enrolled and to upgrade the enrollment to 90 percent in the districts.

He added that the government would make sure that all existing out-of-school children would receive primary education by 2015. It aims to admit around 7 million children this academic session, thereby increasing the school enrolment rate to 97 percent, up from 95.3.

Meanwhile, the DoE has asked the district education offices to take action against the fake schools across the country by mid-April. Only 52 districts offices have submitted final report to the central body till date, whereas none of the Tarai district offices have produced the details.

The community schools were found showing a combined figure of around 2,60,000 fake students to receive maximum amount in government grant which is disbursed based on the number of students enrolled.

source:republica,7 April 2013