Back to A, B, C... for Gulbarga SSLC students
‘New’ beginning
After racking their brains on a strategy to improve the abysmal results of SSLC examination in the district, managers of secondary education in Gulbarga division have finally found the answer: teaching alphabets to high school students!
The alphabet and formation of words and sentences would be taught both in Kannada and English to students from VIII to X standard during the current academic year.
Teachers in both government and aided private schools have been asked to conduct a few special classes every day to make the students ‘literate’ and enhance their learning skills. Students will also be taught the tables to make them efficient in mathematics.
According to Additional Commissioner of Public Instructions Syed Abdul Rub, about 25 per cent students in high schools in the districts of the Commissionerate don’t know reading and writing. Students not able to read and write in the three classes of high school will be identified and clubbed together to impart rudimentary education.
The government policy not to fail any student in primary classes is said to be the primary reason for students remaining ignorant even after coming to high school. Schemes such as Chinnara Angala, Nali Kali, etc. launched to enhance learning ability do not seem to have delivered the desired results. Even opening a separate Directorate/Commissionerate exclusively for the region a decade ago has made no impact on the SSLC results that continue to be abysmally low.
For the year 2009-10 state average result was 68.77 per cent but not a single district of the division was found anywhere close to it.
Among all the districts of the division, Bidar had the lowest result percentage of 33.27 that is below even half of the State average. Bidar, Yadgir, Gulbarga, and Raichur are the worst performing districts while Koppal and Bellary have shown some improvement. According to Rub, Chikodi education district has shown a remarkable upswing and has catapulted itself to the number one slot.
Teachers to adopt students
To arrest the absenteeism among students, each teacher has been directed to adopt three to 10 frequently absent students and their responsibility will be to make them attend classes using persuasive skills. The Administrative Training Institute, Mysore, has been roped in to train teachers to bring in qualitative changes in teaching. The ATI is spending Rs 10,000 on each government school which have registered poor results under the Backward Region Area Development Fund. Headmasters of schools have been made accountable by constantly interacting with teachers and students. Teachers are asked to use teaching aids.
Rub said 20 model question papers have been drafted for each subject to conduct periodical tests by releasing questions four days in advance. By the time the syllabus is completed by December, all the model question papers would have been tried out. Rub would be interacting with 10 headmasters and 10 students every day and his officers would be in touch with 330 HMs and as many students every day to ensure that the reforms are implemented in letter and spirit.
DH News Service
