101 Schools In Odisha To Be Developed As Centres Of Excellence: CM

Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday directed the School and Mass Education Department to develop 101 schools in all 30 districts of Odisha as centres of excellence and open English medium sections in Class I in these schools.

He also announced financial assistance of Rs 25 lakh to each school to meet its software infrastructure requirement.

Mentioned below are the other decisions to be implemented by the government in accordance with the directive of the Chief Minister.

—Spoken English teaching from Class I in all schools of the state.
—Aadhaar seeding of all school students to be made mandatory.
—Posting of teachers in all primary and secondary schools on priority
—Non-government Primary, Upper Primary and High schools having less than 20 students will be clubbed with the nearby government school situated at a distance of 1 km, 2 km and 3 km respectively so that there is no shortage of teachers.
—Escort allowance to be provided to the students to be shifted to other schools under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Apart from this, a shifting allowance of Rs 5000 will also be provided to each student.
—The state government will formulate a policy to club all block grant, aided and newly-aided schools with the nearby government schools, close the non-forming block grant schools and depute block grant and government teachers to other government schools.
—If more students are studying in any block grant schools in the five districts, which were affected by Cyclone Fani, the government will provide funds for the infrastructure development and maintenance of these schools.
—If there are fewer students in any block grant schools in these five Fani-hit districts, they will be clubbed with the nearby government school.
—As the state government has decided to bring the School and Mass Education Department under the purview of the Mo Sarkar programme, the mobile phone number of the parents and guardians will be digitised.
—Instructions have been given to the concerned authorities to facilitate the students to get their academic certificates online.
—Steps have been taken for the appointment of lecturers from the Higher Education Department in all teachers’ training institutes.