NEW DELHI: With the latest Social Audit Report giving top marks to the education sector in the Capital for performing well, the Delhi Government's Education Department has embarked upon new initiatives. Some of them are already having a positive impact on the functioning of government schools, teachers and students.

Health check-up

After the successful implementation of the "Yuva" initiative and the scheme for a health check-up of all students in government schools, the Department has managed to bring about a drastic fall in the dropout rate in government schools, especially for the girls.

Under Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely and Secretary (Education) Reena Ray the Department has managed to change its profile from a non-functioning entity to a set-up that is working towards improving the standard of education in government schools.

Officials

According to Mr. Lovely, the Department and its officials have all the reasons to be proud as new landmarks have been achieved this year.

"The new system of online admissions helps in gathering a thorough computerised data base of students, helps track inter and intra school movements of students and thereby keep account of the dropout rate in the schools especially in respect of the girl students. The dropout rate has been brought down from 19.7 per cent in 2004-05 to 5.7 per cent in 2006-07. This has led to more than one lakh new admissions, of which 50,000 are girl students who never made it to school beyond Class V."

Compared to last year, there has been a tremendous increase in enrolment of students in government schools this year. During 2006-07, about 1,137,600 students enrolled in Delhi Government schools while in 2005-06, the enrolment was 1,010,103, a growth of 12.62 per cent.

The results of Class X after the compartment examinations improved to 76.77 per cent thereby registering a growth of 28 percentage points over the original results of Class X before the compartment examinations. Similarly, the Class XII results after the compartment examinations have risen to 88.45 per cent registering a growth of 12 percentage points as compared to the original results before the compartment examinations.

Teaching methods

Stating that the Department was looking beyond routine teaching methods in order to sharpen the skills of the students to bring them at par with the students in public schools, Mr. Lovely said a unique initiative called Computer Aided Learning (CAL) Programme - CAL Toonz 2006 -- has been introduced.

The initiative teaches the curriculum and the textbooks in the classrooms through computer-aided learning for students in government schools. CAL Toonz is a part of the Department's flagship programme Yuva that has been introduced to ensure that learning is joyful, meaningful and interesting.

School magazines

According to Mr. Lovely, the CAL Programme would be expanded to around 200 schools. It is also proposed to introduce the Yuva initiative from Class VI to Class XII in all government schools and start mental maths for Class VI to Class XII, computerised marksheets for all classes, online diary system, computerisation of library and launch of school magazines.

In an attempt to reduce shortage of teaching staff in government schools, the Department has also created 3,800 new posts of Assistant Teachers.

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