An action plan is being prepared as part of steps to improve the quality of education in the State.
The detailed plan, being drawn up by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) following a meeting with the General Education Principal Secretary on the directions of the Chief Minister, will address lacunae in continuous evaluation and make schoolteachers responsible for ensuring that children attain learning outcomes specified in the curriculum.
Focus is on short-term measures, besides long-term plans, for raising standards.
The SCERT believes that to make continuous evaluation effective, the school resource group (SRG), under the leadership of the head teacher, should plan and discuss all activities to be implemented every week.
Monitoring should be done to ensure that analysis of the quarterly examinations held ahead of Onam and remedial measures to address any shortcomings are done without fail in schools. This should, in fact, be held for all examinations.
As students in the State are found to have difficulties in attempting questions framed at the national level as part of the National Achievement Survey, conducted by the Union Education Ministry to obtain information about learning achievement of students, model question paper preparation and making students familiar with them will be made part of classroom practices.
Parental awareness will have to be created on the action plan once it gets the nod for implementation.
The plan will have clearly defined roles – for the General Education department; SCERT; Samagra Shiksha, Kerala; teachers; and the parent-teacher association in order to achieve the goal of improvement of quality of school education.
Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty said that after the recommendations that arose at the education conclave on quality improvement were submitted to the Chief Minister, a SCERT committee was tasked with the preparation of the draft of the action plan and it too has been submitted to the Chief Minister.
The Minister said that changes were needed in teaching-learning from class I to IX. This included focus on aspects such as personal attention to students and how to provide academic support to students who were not faring well.
As far as minimum marks in the theory component of the SSLC examinations was concerned, further discussions would be held. The SCERT had been asked to examine how minimum marks were awarded in other States too, besides that in CBSE. Teachers’ organisations were in support of the proposal, as well as parents. The department was trying to implement the minimum marks proposal this year itself.
