During the  next three-days, more than 48,000 government schools across the state will hold interaction programmes with parents and other stake holders to discuss measures to improve the quality of education as a part of the revitalised “Samudayadatta Shale” initiative.

First designed in 2001, Samudayadatta Shale was meant to involve the community for improvement of schools.

However, the initiative after initial success failed to take off.

The education department has now decided to revive the programme. Public Instruction Commissioner Kumar Naik told reporters in Bangalore on Monday that concrete steps have been taken to increase the awareness among the primary stake holders about the initiative.

 Day-long interaction programmes will be held in 44,000 government primary schools and 4,800 high schools across the State between January 29 and 31.

Besides parents, members of School Development and Monitoring Committees (SDMCs) and gram panchayat members have been invited for the meeting. The progress of children, their performance and marks scored in the tests will be discussed. The essential requirements and necessities of schools will be identified and short term, medium term and long term plans will be evolved, he added.

For the records, as many as 2.05 lakh teachers, 1.02 crore students and 52 lakh parents will participate in the programme.

Replying to queries, Naik said the committee constituted to recommend guidelines for a comprehensive admission policy for private aided and unaided institutions will be submitting its report soon. However, he was not specific whether this policy would be implemented in the academic year 2008-09, as many schools have already completed their admission process.

The policy will be broadly based on the Delhi model of admissions (recommended by the Ganguly committee), which includes constitution of school-wise committees to monitor the admission process.

Planning Board

The education department has placed before the State Planning Board that the grants required to meet the infrastructure gap in government schools will be around Rs 2,000 crore for the next five years.

A presentation to this effect was made before the State Planning Board, Mr Naik said. At least one fourth of the grant sought is likely to be released this year.