Bifurcate school education dept: USE panel head

CHENNAI: Stressing the need for a monitoring agency to ensure that government and government-aided schools are functioning properly, the head of Samacheer Kalvi committee, S Muthukumaran, on Friday called for the bifurcation of the School Education Department (SED). One wing of the department could be involved in administration of schools while the other could monitor and evaluate their functioning, he said at a consultation on the status of the Uniform School Education (USE) system.“At the time of writing the committee’s report (2006-07), there were 5,000 schools in Tamil Nadu of which 4,500 were either government or government-aided schools. The SED, which is running these schools cannot be expected to evaluate it too. So there should be an exclusive evaluation wing to monitor the progress,” Muthukumaran said. Ruing that the SED did not have any handbook, manual or code, he said such instruction booklets should be formed for schools by the State Common Board of School Education. “The regulations for running schools in the State should be prescribed by the Board like minimum land requirement, assembly area, labs, teacher-student ratio, number of classrooms, playground space etc. For this, the Board should be given more autonomy and it should be a non-political body. Only then, its work will also come under scrutiny and its annual reports discussed in the assembly,” he said.Speaking about the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation System proposed to be introduced next year, he said the grade system would get rid off unwarranted competition among students. However, he did not favour Formative and Summative assessments being held for 40 and 60 marks each. Instead, they should be conducted for 100 marks each and the final grade deduced by taking their average in that ratio, he said.The consultation was organised by the Human Rights Advocacy and Research Foundation, Society for Integrated Rural Development and Legal Aid for Women Trust. Following the daylong consultation, a resolution was adopted. It was decided to represent to the government the need to abolish the four educational boards and merge them into one. Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System demanded the abolition of the Directorate of Matriculation Schools, so that their schools would come under the purview of the Directorate of School Education. Dr V Vasanthi Devi, former Vice Chancellor, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, said that the administration of tribal schools should be taken away from the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department and Revenue Department and handed to local school management committees.