Patna: Tightening the mechanism of monitoring for quality education in the government schools, the education department, Bihar, has asked the district magistrates (DMs) to appoint deputy collector-rank officers in their respective districts as nodal officers to inspect schools against which the complaints pour in the department’s command and control system.
Additional chief secretary, education department, S Siddharth in letters to the DMs on June 14 said that the deputy collectors, who should not be from education department cadre, shall personally inspect the schools, listed by the state headquarters, and submit the details report directly to the department.
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The department had to devise an alternative way of monitoring school activities as its system of supervision, worked out by the department on June 6, are not proving effective to ensure proper teaching atmosphere in the schools. “Otherwise, why complaints shall travel to the control and command dashboard of the department,” said a senior department of the officer.
“The department will list the schools, from where complaints are coming in and the list of schools will be forwarded to the DM for special monitoring by the nodal officers,” said an officer.
On June 6, Siddharth had written letters to all the DMs to ensure regular monitoring of all schools so that they could run in accordance with the set standards and students are imparted quality education. In the letter, he had pointed out that around 8000 staff are engaged in monitoring and supervision of the school education. All senior officers of the deputy development commissioner (DDC) office, including the district education officers (DEOs) and district programme officers (DPOs) have been vested with the responsibility to personally inspect the schools and resolve the grievances of teachers, students and their parents on urgent basis.
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The DMs were told to arrange availability of sufficient number of officers/staff to ensure inspection of every school at least once in a week. “The inspection shall on availability of teachers on time, attendance of students, basic necessary infrastructure, extra curricular activities, etc,” the letter said.
Siddharth in recent letters to the DMs said that nodal officers shall immediately be appointed so that students enrolled in the government schools get quality education there.
The department has already decided to make it mandatory for each and every teacher to mark their biometric attendance through a specially designed app. All schools are being provided tabs to facilitate attendance from the schools. Teachers and headmasters of the schools will also be tasked to mark the students’ attendance through the mobile app, which will be monitored directly by the department on realtime basis.
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A senior officer of the department said that the DEOs will be held responsible for any lapse or grievances of school teachers and students post their inspection. “DEOs shall ben made accountable for any complaint coming to the department’s control and command centre and departmental proceedings may be initiated against those officers, whose action of supervision is not found up to the mark,” he added.
