After teachers,self-evaluation tool for govt schools in state

“We realised rather than outsiders grading schools,let schools evaluate themselves,” said Nandkumar,project director,Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. “Under the method,schools will know areas they lack in and make up and as it will be in public purview they will not be able to cheat about such things,” said Nandkumar.

The schools are required to answer in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to 300 questions and will have to provide the grades to state every two months.

The schools can grade themselves ‘A’,‘B’,‘C’,or ‘D’ in questions based on four attributes — physical,organisational,social and cognisational. Physical questions will include whether the school has a toilet facility,playground etc.,whereas organisational aspect will include questions on inter-personal relationship between teachers and students and other colleagues,management capacities etc. In social and cognisational,the schools will be asked to grade themselves whether students are asking questions,whether the teachers are able to comprehend the questions asked by students etc.,and their command over the subject among others.

“The project,which has already been kickstarted this month,includes a training course for teachers where they are being taught the basics of grading on various parameters,” said a senior official. The pilot project for the self-evaluation system has already been implemented in Lanja block in Ratnagiri and Wardha in Thane . “This kind of self-evaluation system was being implemented as a pilot project in Gujarat. But it is for the first time that the system is being implemented across schools in Maharashtra,” said Nandkumar.

The self-evaluation system for schools comes right after the State Education department introduced a self evaluation tool for teachers last month.