The Education Management Information System (EMIS) has, of late, transformed the dynamics of inspections in government and other schools, owing to the utility of the classroom observation mobile application built over the digital platform.
The practice of sprucing up the campus, extending red-carpet welcome, and stage-managing classroom transactions to impress the inspection teams has become a thing of the past, according to school heads here.
The mobile application has been specifically designed for the inspection teams to capture the processes in teaching learning and classroom transaction, and to conduct end of observation assessments, on a real time basis.
“The EMIS has made it quite easy for the inspection teams to determine the time tables and make random visits, but with a clear idea of which classroom activity needs to be observed. There is no prompting by teachers and the inspection team members interact with students of their choice to make sure of their learning skills,” said Parthiban, a senior teacher of Corporation Middle School at Bhagawathipuram in Tiruverumbur town.
The application is very much a productive tool in the hands of both headmasters and other inspecting cadre for quality transaction and follow up on teacher training, states the policy note of the school education department pertaining to 2022-23.
Not surprisingly, teachers find the EMIS a bitter-sweet pill. Sweet because of the transparency in tracking data and arriving at informed decisions, and bitter since the digital platform warrants substantial time for gathering and collating data. School heads are also on their toes due to the necessity to constantly upload data pertaining to the students, staff and institution, in the EMIS portal through exclusive logins, on real time basis.
As for the teachers, they have also been given separate logins to mark and track the attendance of students and attend personalised training programmes. Yet, there is unanimity that EMIS is a necessity for quality infusion into teaching-learning processes
The tasks of administrative officers at Block, Education District, Revenue District and the State level have been made much easier since they could, through separate logins provided to them, key-in inputs, view reports and access dashboards for monitoring, tracking and compliance purposes.
Since school based administrative and academic registers are being automated through EMIS, the need for them to laboriously fill up manual registers has been obviated, a headmaster said.
According to senior officials in the School Education Department, school heads will soon be able to easily streamline the benefits being provided under several departments such as the National Health Mission, District Institute of Education and Training, Differently Abled Welfare Department, Social Welfare Department, and Adi-Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department.
The EMIS data, said a Science teacher in a government higher secondary school, was quite reliable for verification in implementing the 7.5% reservation in higher education institutions extended to the government school students who undergo Tamil-medium education from levels VI to XII.
