School to tap sports talent on the cards

South civic body plans reforms for overall development of students

To ensure all-round development of education in municipal schools, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation has come with new programmes for the next financial year.

These initiatives were proposed by the education committee chairman Satish Upadhyay in the budget discussion of the standing committee on Thursday.

They include a sports school with multi-media classrooms, appointment of consultant for monitoring construction of modern school buildings and hiring experts for music and arts. Upadhyay said by opening a sports school, they want to promote sports culture in the city.

“The city does not have a single sports school. We would open a talent search academy for sports next year, which would help in identifying talent in sports at a young age,” said Upadhyay.

In sports like gymnastic and athletes the training needs to start at a young age to compete in international events like Olympics, added Upadhyay. “The existing infrastructure at Ambedkar stadium could be used for launching the academy in the first phase,” he said.

“In the second phase, the academy would be developed into a full-fledged residential school.” The new schemes will help reform the way in which education is being imparted to schoolchildren.

“We want to usher in change from the design of the school buildings itself. Currently, all the school buildings look the same. From next year, we would appoint a consultant to monitor the construction of upcoming school buildings,” Upadhyay said.

“The consultant would help in suggesting new designs that would transform the walls of the schools, stairs, colours used in whitewashing etc as one of the tools of education.”
The corporation has also decided to hire experts on contractual basis.

“Hiring special teachers on a permanent basis takes time and gets stuck in bureaucratic set up. So we have decided to hire students of arts and music from Delhi University to train students,” said Upadhyay.

The total expenditure outlay for the new schemes will be Rs 20.78 crore.  These initiatives will increase the budgetary allocation to the education sector in the next financial year, 2013-14, to Rs 638.31 crore.

The SDMC commissioner Manish Gupta in his budget proposals had allocated Rs 617.53 crore.