Panaji: Chief minister Pramod Sawant on Thursday questioned the heads of various schools why the performance of the schools in certain areas is falling despite state government giving all the required facilities and good pay scale for the teachers.
Sawant was addressing the State Level Conference for School Heads orgnised by Goa Headmasters’ Association in Panaji. The chief minister was referring to the National Achievement Survey (NAS) which has found that Goa has fallen below the national average in certain areas of education.
“When NAS showed poor performance of the students in maths and science, people were not criticizing schools but there was direct questionmark raised on the State government,” Sawant said.
He said that the state government was held responsible for the poor ranking in the NAS.
“Despite giving good infrastructure to the schools compared to other states and good pay scale to the teachers, why is that the performance has gone so poor?,” he questioned all the Heads.
“This is a question that is haunting me,” he said taking a pause, even as there was pin drop silence in the hall.
The chief minister, who also holds Education Portfolio, said that the schools are just generating “graduates.”
Sawant also said that there is a race to have hundred percent result in the Secondary School Certificate examinations by the schools.
“As a result, there is huge drop out of student in the ninth standard. Everyone wants that their school should have hundred per cent students passing,” he said.
Speaking further, Sawant said that the New Education Policy is addressing the practical issues faced by the students.
The policy speaks about the skilling of students and I am thankful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has started a separate skilling ministry, he said.
Sawant said that the last education policy was introduced in the year 1986 which focused on ensuring that no one is left without school education.
“The new policy speaks about skilling and every teacher should take this policy seriously,” he said adding that it is not possible to create infrastructure required for the policy overnight but the efforts are on to ensure that the implementation of the policy is made easier.
