‘Academic audit to usher in quality in social welfare schools

IT will assess performance by identifying the gaps and take steps to rectify them

To usher in quality, the State government has introduced the concept of ‘academic audit’ in the 192 institutes run by the Andhra Pradesh Social Welfare Residential Educational Society, that works under the Department of Social Welfare.

The objective is to assess the performance of the schools by identifying the gaps and initiate effective measures to rectify them. Academic Audit Teams (AAT) nominated by the Secretary, Social Welfare Department, visit schools and assess their performance for 200 marks by focussing on key aspects such as administrative capabilities, teacher assessment, student learning assessment and sports and co-curricular activities in the institutes.

Proformas with benchmarks and key performance indicators have been designed under the guidance of experts from the Collegiate Education.

In phase-I, 31 of the 192 institutes have been audited in the last three days and the remaining ones will be audited after Sankranthi holidays. The schools will be graded and ranked based on the marks obtained and the low-performing ones would be constantly monitored and will be given a ‘hand-holding’ by the State academic monitoring unit.

The concept of Academic and Administrative Audits (AAA) for Degree colleges was formulated by the Principal Secretary, Social Welfare Department K. Suneetha when she was Commissioner of the College Education. She felt the need to extend it to the social welfare schools to fill the gaps and thus the first ever school-level comprehensive academic audit in the country was initiated in the State.

Besides a State-level Academic Audit (AA) committee comprising an Academic Monitoring Officer/ Joint Secretary (Academics)-Academic Audit Officer, District Coordinating Officer-Deputy Academic Audit Officer, a Junior Lecturer/ Post-Graduate teacher- Subject Matter Experts (one for languages, one for Science, one for Humanities and one for Mathematics), the district-level committee includes a District Coordinating Officer-Academic Audit Officer, Principal- Deputy Academic Audit Officer,one Junior Lecturer and one Post Graduate teacher.

The State panel not only nominates the Deputy Academic Audit Officer and subject matter experts for district committees, but also randomly allocates the schools to the district academic audit teams, following the policy of “no academic committee will audit its own district.”

It collects the audit reports from the districts panels and verifies them and if there is a lapse, it asks for a fresh report from the district AA team within 10 days with an explanation. It then consolidates all the audit reports and gives the schools rankings based on the marks given to them and the list should be posted on the department website.

“The AA reports will help the schools introspect and strive to better their performance in future,” said Minister for Social Welfare P. Viswaroop, at a Board meeting recently.

Secretary K. Harshavardhan said the initiative would help the schools identify their weak points and help them improve their performance in those particular areas.