The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : No transfer of teachers this academic year

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 19, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

No transfer of teachers this academic year

Special Correspondent

Minister releases report on quality assessment of schools for the year 2007-08

School-level quality improvement panels to be set up
1.2 crore books distributed among schoolchildren

Bangalore: Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri on Wednesday said that school level quality improvement committees would be set up to achieve overall development of the infrastructure leading to an improvement in academics.

He was speaking to presspersons after releasing the report of the quality assessment of the schools by the Karnataka School Quality Assessment Organisation in January last for the year 2007-08.

He said that the committees would be entrusted with the responsibility of improving performance of the pupils and teachers, curriculum and infrastructure to achieve these objectives.

Mr. Kageri said that the new system, which has been labelled “panchasutra’ system of overall development of the school at micro level would get the final nod by the Cabinet. About the delay in the payment of salaries to teachers, he said it was because the salary was disbursed under 20 heads and added that it would be simplified through a cluster level payment system.

The Minister said that in the current academic year, there would be no transfer of teachers and the government did not want to put the teaching community to hardship. The school development management committees that were in force in 2007-08 would be continued. Ninety-five per cent of the schoolchildren had been covered under the Akshara Dasoha midday meal programme.

He said that of the 1.34 crore books required during the academic year, 1.2 crore had been distributed and the remaining would be given to students in a week. Planning for availability of textbooks for the next year was in progress and there would be no problem. The distribution of bicycles to the students in 8th standard during 2008-09 had started. About the quality assessment of primary education report, the Minister said that the quality continued to be upgraded ever since it was launched in 2005. About 43,400 students of fifth and seventh standards of government and aided schools were assessed by 47,722 teachers and 15,29,677 students were given questionnaire for the purpose.

They were asked to give answers to the questions, which were selected from outside the syllabus.

Mr. Kageri said that there were about 1.10 crore children in the schools and they would undergo this exercise for another couple of years. He claimed that the exercise was introduced for the first time in the country and efforts would be made to get international recognition to it.

The subjects selected for the assessment were Kannada, Urdu, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu as first language; English and Kannada as second language; Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences as core subjects and extra curricular subjects.

The percentage of results in Kannada medium was 71.04 per cent, 73.33 per cent in Urdu medium, 78.04 per cent in Marathi medium, 67.38 per cent and 66.70 per cent in Tamil and Telugu medium respectively.

Mr. Kageri stated that the Union Government had increased the educational grant under the Sarva Shikshana Abhiyana from Rs. 697 crore in 2007-08 to Rs. 958 crore for 2008-09.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka