JNS: Chief Minister Hemant Soren has taken a concrete measure towards providing quality education to the students of Jharkhand by converting government schools into ‘Schools of Excellence’. In the first phase, the proposed 80 schools across all the districts of the State are being transformed into ‘School of Excellence’. The education department has already floated a tender for the same. Initially, a tender for 27 schools has been floated by the department and another tender for the remaining 53 schools will be floated soon.
JNS: As per the vision of the CM, almost 5,000 government-run schools will be transformed into modern education facilities. Given this, the education department has already come into action and the work is being done on war footing. It is aimed that by the start of the 2022-23 academic session, 80 district-level schools of excellence would be ready to cater to almost 2,00,000 students from across the state.
The government has planned to develop a world-class education infrastructure in all the ‘Schools of Excellence’. The schools will be equipped with an uninterrupted electricity supply, the installation of eye-friendly lights and a clean atmosphere. The classrooms will be equipped with smart board facilities where students can learn through the virtual and 3D representation of subject material.
The development of these schools is being planned on the model of private schools and will ensure that a child from the marginalized sections of the society gets quality education which is at par with private schools. Given this, separate labs, libraries, and STEM Labs will be established in each school.
Earlier, due to lack of sanitation and lavatory facilities at schools, the drop-out rate of girls from schools was high. To address this issue the government has planned to equip all the school premises with separate lavatory facilities for both girls and boys.
To improve the standards of government-run schools and bring them at par with the standards of national and international standards in terms of accessibility, equality and quality of education, the government has aimed at converting the medium of instructions from Hindi to English from the primary level itself.
A targeted class of book reading will be conducted for children.
Textbooks, storybooks, articles etc will be used as reading material for students to practice pronunciation and improve their reading ability. A dedicated language lab will be set up in these model schools to improve learning outcomes and it will also be used as a review mechanism tool.
The CM has directed officials of the education department to arrange for the training module of all the stakeholders starting from the school principals to the SMC(School Management Committee). With the help of premier institutes of the country, teachers deputed at ‘School of Excellence’ will be provided with focused training as per the National & International Standards.
The Education department is working on roping in expert trainers from different parts of the country to provide regular training to the teaching staff.
The team will simultaneously work on training and handholding of teaching staff and involve members of SMCs to create a sense of ownership to the community, which will help in creating a sustainable model.
To ensure student-centred teaching, subject-wise training will be given to the teachers posted at the school on a timely basis for the development of technical capacity in the respective subject and smart management of the classroom.
School of Excellence will cater to students from pre-primary level till the 12th standard. The scheme will benefit approximately 15 lakh children from across the state. The goal is to make this a flagship scheme for Jharkhand, through the same the government hopes to bring all the government schools at par with national and international standards in terms of accessibility, equality, and quality of education.
The government’s target is to operationalise 80 district level schools of excellence before the start of the session 2022-23, 329 block schools before the session of 2023-24 and more than 4,000 Panchayat level schools before the session of 2024-25.
