‘Samjho Sikho’ campaign: After hiking enrollment in Bihar schools, quality is the agenda!
Patna: in a long awaited move, the Bihar government is now finally addressing the issue of quality in primary education. The thinking behind this delay, whether one agrees or not was that priority must be given to getting children to come to the school and enroll. After achieving success in school enrollment, the Bihar government used the occasion of Teachers’ Day on Monday to launch a scheme to improve the quality of education in the state.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar launched the ‘Samjho Sikho’ campaign covering nearly 71,000 elementary schools across Bihar. ‘After achieving success in enrollment in schools, now our target is to improve quality of education in the schools,’ Nitish Kumar said after launching the scheme, also mentioning that the state government has outlined 20 parameters that will be followed by all schools.
The CM has also written a letter addressing teachers circulated to all elementary schools, to be read out to students wherein he suggests ways to improve quality of education. He said that in the last five and a half years, the state government has worked hard to ensure that children are enrolled in schools. “The government’s measures have succeeded to a large extent as only 2.5 percent children are now out of school. When I came to power in November 2005, 12 percent children were out of schools,” Nitish Kumar said. He said that regular assemblies should be organised in all schools, and the last period should be fixed for sports and cultural activities.
About 38 campaign vehicles are to travel across the state as part of the campaign to create awareness among people. The ‘Samjho Sikho’ campaign is a joint effort of the Bihar Education Project Council and Unicef. The state government is spending Rs.50 crore on the project. According to Census 2011, Bihar has a literacy rate of 63.8 percent, against the national average of 74 percent and the state thus has a long way to go.
I appreciate the step taken by the government. But , a lot of things have to be done starting form the grass root level.Recently, I saw a video a video on Facebook which clearly pictured the level of knowledge the teachers of the primary school in my state has. Its a positive sign that the number of students has increased in the primary schools. But, with all due respect Mr. CM please improve the quality of the teachers these schools have. I am a proud Bihari and respect this government but somewhere I feel that the appointment of teachers in the state has a loophole in it and its more or less caste based. Its my personal opinion and I may be wrong.
Jai Bihar