Bhubaneswar: In a move to strengthen school education, the Odisha government has decided to merge the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) and the Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) into one single board.
The decision was taken at a review meeting of the School and Mass Education department chaired by Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi at the Lok Seva Bhawan in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.
Notably, the BSE is responsible for the curriculum and exams for Classes 1 to 10, while CHSE is in overall charge of Class XI and XII.
Officials said the meeting thoroughly discussed the issue and felt there is a need of a single board to streamline school education in the state and merging the two boards into one was important.
The Chief Minister also announced that while students from Class I to VIII are already receiving free textbooks, all students of Class IX and X will also be provided textbooks free of cost from now on. Earlier, free textbooks in these classes were limited to SC/ST students only.
According due importance to health along with education, the government decided to appoint ANMs or multipurpose health workers in hostels, at the ratio of one ANM for every 300 students. This apart, approval of new private schools will now be done entirely through an online process.
The Chief Minister also stressed the importance of mother tongue-based education for tribal children, which would help in better communication and improve learning outcomes. To support this, a multilingual education centre will be set up in Koraput with the support of SCSTRTI.
For inclusive education, regular teachers with B.Ed in special education will be appointed as resource persons across clusters for differently-abled children. The state also decided to develop SCERT on the lines of NCERT, and to strengthen the Directorate of Textbook Publication and Marketing.
School & Mass Education Minister Nityananda Gond, Chief Secretary Manoj Ahuja, Chief Minister’s Principal Secretary Shashwat Mishra, Finance Secretary Sanjeev Mishra, School & Mass Education Secretary Shalini Pandit, and OSEPA Director Ananya Das were among those who attended the meeting
