Srinagar: Chief Secretary (CS) Arun Kumar Mehta Wednesday asked the teaching faculty of the School Education Department (SED) to focus on the learning outcome of the students and Early Child Care Education (ECCE).
He was speaking during an interaction with the teachers and other officers of the SED at SKICC here that was held to discuss the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 besides other initiatives taken by the department.
During the interaction, the chief secretary took direct feedback from the teachers regarding the implementation of NEP-2020 and Human Resource Management (HRM) including transfers and promotions in the department.
He asked the department to establish a helpline for teachers for their grievances exclusively meant for students and schools.
“Every school should get a model kindergarten and special focus should be given on learning outcomes of children besides ECCE,” Mehta said.
He stressed imparting online training to teachers and said that the training should be given to every teacher, probably in an online mode.
“There should be a healthy competition among the teachers that will encourage them to perform better and deliver good results,” Mehta said.
He asked the SED to record real-time class lectures so that the best lecture prepared by any teaching staff member would be rewarded.
“The department should introduce online certificate courses and digital learning among the schools as well,” Mehta said.
Stressing the need for providing special educators to the specially-abled students, he said special educators would be provided in schools wherever needed.
Around 5000 specially-abled students have enrolled in government schools for which the department has availability of only 70 to 80 special educators.
The chief secretary said that the Education Department should go for resource pooling at complex levels wherein there would be sharing of teachers within the complex head as per the requirement in schools.
“Teacher transfers should not be done regularly, due to the bonds created between the students and the teachers. The next ATD will be done in January, not in mid-session,” he said.
Mehta said that the transfers should be done on the performance of teachers based on the results of their students.
“School ratings should be done based on various components and variables. Real-time feedback from all the stakeholders, especially from students should be taken to improve their learning levels,” he said.
The chief secretary asked the SED to uplift the Educationally Backward Blocks (Zones) in a time-bound manner and said that the department should give recognition to the best teachers.
“School-level sports competition activity should be done regularly,” he said.
Earlier, Director School Education Kashmir (DSEK) Dr Tasaduq Mir presented the welcome address.
During the proceedings, Principal Secretary SED Bishwajit Kumar Singh gave a detailed presentation of the department to highlight the achievements and other issues confronting the department.
During the interaction, the teachers presented their feedback about the implementation of NEP-2020 and suggested that a resource bank should be created to train all the stakeholders for the implementation of NEP at the school level.
“School-based assessment is one of the important elements in NEP 2020 but unfortunately no concrete document is available when we talk about the 360-degree achievement card also known as the holistic development achievement card,” said Umar Bhat, a teacher posted in Baramulla district.
Referring to NEP-2020 he said that the students of the private schools would be introduced to English at a much earlier age than the students of the government schools.
“The academic syllabus will be taught in the respective regional languages of the government school students. This is one of the major drawbacks as this will make students uncomfortable in communicating in English, widening the gap between the sections of the societies,” he said.