TN announces various measures to improve education quality

Updated on: Saturday, August 27, 2011

Holding that a mere common syllabus would not suffice in ensuring uniform and quality education, Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa made a slew of announcements to improve school education in the state.

Making an announcement in the Assembly, she said more than 700 lower and middle-level schools would be upgraded. Over 18,000 teachers and non-teaching staff would be appointed, she said.

While some programmes, including the Rs 1082.71 crore infrastructure development scheme for schools would be implemented as part of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, a Centre-State initiative, the state will grant funds from its own resources for some other schemes, Jayalalithaa said.

"As it has been mentioned in the Prof Muthukumaran Committee (appointed to advise the government on Samacheer Kalvi or Uniform Education) basic infrastructure is imperative (and) common syallabus alone cannot be Samacheer Kalvi. My government is well aware of this and Rs 1082.71 crore will be allotted this year for upgrading infrastructure in schools", she said.

Further, with a view to improve the teaching standards in government-run schools a new scheme, ICT@Schools, Tamil Nadu, would be implemented, she said, adding, core concepts of respective subjects would be computerised and presented in classrooms.

"Efforts will be taken to use satellite-based dissemination of compilation of lectures by best teachers to classrooms under this scheme," she said.

Chess would be introduced for students between the age of 7-17 years to improve their intellectual grasp, she said.

Further, to make children carry lesser number of books, the state will implement a Trimester pattern in which books for the entire academic year will be pided according to respective terms and exams will be condicted along with continuous assessment, Jayalalithaa said.

Such a step would result in mitigating fears, concerns and pressure on students besides allowing them to carry lesser number of books to schools, the Chief Minister said.

She announced her government would also provide bags and geomtery boxes to all students in the state as part of ensuring equality among them.

Mark sheets of class X and XII students will be affixed with their photographs with a secret code to avoid their misuse, she announced.

The government will also create more than 16000 part-time teacher vacancies in the areas of vocational training, physical education and painting to benefit students from Classes VII-VIII.

All these schemes would be implemented, some of them this year itself, by the School Education Department, she said adding these steps would ensure delivery of "true uniform education" under conducive atmosphere.

TN announces various measures to improve education quality

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