Steps planned to improve quality of education in Bidar

The district administration and zilla panchayat have planned a series of measures to improve the quality of education in the district.

The measures include regular testing, supplementary teaching and innovative programmes to improve results in some subjects.

Bidar has regularly placed last in terms of SSLC and PU results for a few years now.

The first measure would be quality testing of the teaching–learning process. This would be done by class and school-level tests in primary and secondary schools twice a year.

A software tool is being developed to track the educational achievements of each student. School-wise scores will be analysed to gauge the performance of students along with the level of effectiveness of teaching. After the average and median scores are fixed, schools will be divided on the basis of effectiveness in teaching. “We will give the results sheets of each school to the headmaster and teachers. Explanations will be sought from teachers if a large proportion of their students are not doing well,” Ujjwal Kumar Ghosh, zilla panchayat, Chief Executive Officer, told The Hindu .

He said action would be initiated against teachers who were found to be regularly absent, negligent of duties or accused of being inebriated at work.

The second step would be to hold orientation programmes for headmasters and school development and management committee presidents. Headmasters would be encouraged to speak about the challenges they faced in ensuring quality education. A joint effort would be made to explore solutions to these issues, Mr. Ghosh said.

“We will get some resource persons who can tell the presidents of SDMCs about their duties and responsibilities. We need to tell them about what is wrong with schooling and how they can help schools in which their own children study,” he said.

“The State government is introducing English as a subject from class one from this year and we need to make some preparations,” P.C. Jaffer, Deputy Commissioner, said.

“We have urged resource persons from the English and Foreign Languages University to prepare a three-day training module in English training for primary teachers,” he said. Bridge courses would be held to train students who pass SSLC from Kannada, Urdu and Marathi-medium schools.

Finally, 4,000 officials from government departments would be assigned a government school. They would visit the school regularly, monitor the quality of teaching and report to senior officials, Dr. Jaffer said.