VSKs set to be decentralised, to come up at all talukas

The operations are expected to start by early next year. “While the Taluka Bhavans (centres in talukas) will have dashboards (on the monitoring data), we are also planning to have dashboards at every school. The last mile of VSK is the taluka level, which will help in taking the burden off from the VSK,” Education Secretary Vinod Rao told The Indian Express.

In June 2021, former Chief Minister Vijay Rupani inaugurated CCC 2.0, the Command and Control Centre, with a technological and infrastructural upgrade. It went beyond mere surveillance and tracking of teachers, cluster resource centre coordinators and block resource centre coordinators, which was done earlier by the centre operating from an old building on the same campus, launched in 2019.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the VSK last April and virtually interacted with students, teachers and School Management Committee (SMC) members. The next day, he asked all states to replicate the model.
As per the department’s plans, every block resource centre (BRC) co-ordinator will have to track and monitor students of an average of 150 schools. Every BRC coordinator will be assisted by around 10-12 cluster resource centre (CRC) coordinators.

At present, monitoring of enrolment, attendance, learning outcomes, dropouts, school accreditation and monitoring of schools, teachers and block and cluster resource centre co-ordinators is done at the VSK in Gandhinagar. For instance, it monitors 55,000 primary and secondary schools and handholds 4 lakh teachers to help improve the learning outcomes of 1.2 crore students.

With VSKs at each district and taluka, the one in Gandhinagar will be converted into a decision-making centre while the ones in districts will undertake research and handhold officials. Action will be taken at the taluka level.

At the end of this month, the department plans to finalise the detailed plan for the implementation in order to make it functional in January 2024. Established with the aim to improve the quality of education by ensuring that teachers stick to their assigned tasks on a daily basis, the VSK system was devised after various discussions and reports concluded that poor monitoring of teachers resulted in absenteeism and “non-seriousness”, as per officials.