Our goal to make govt schools better than private ones in Rajasthan: Vasudev Devnani

Among the significant reforms introduced by the BJP government, Devnani said, were the decisions to introduce a “board” for students of Class V, while bringing in a new fee act that would limit the government’s role in regulating tuition fees for private schools. The fees would now be decided by a panel comprising the school administration and parents.

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“Government schools have shown marked improvement in terms of teacher satisfaction, student-teacher ratios as well as results. It is our intention to make government-run schools come on a par with, and even surpass, private schools,” he said.

During the past year, enrolment in government schools had increased substantially, Devnani claimed. “Over 8,50,000 new enrolments have taken place in the last one year alone. Of these, 5 lakh are at the secondary level while the rest are for primary level,” he said. Compared to this, the last three years under the Congress government saw a fall in enrolment by 12 lakh, he alleged.

The government aims to boost enrolment further by taking the number up to 10 lakh this year.

Devnani said the government’s efforts had resulted in better teacher satisfaction, leading to improvement in quality of education. Out of the 15-rank statewide merit list, eight ranks went to 13 students from government-run schools, Devnani said.

“We promoted 72,000 teachers through 500 departmental promotion committees, provided 32,000 new postings for teachers. The promotions of another 40,000 are pending. All this boosted teacher morale and helped us get better results for students,” he said.

Besides promotions, the education ministry is also in the process of streamlining teaching positions by demarcating subject-specific teachers at the primary level of schooling.

“Earlier, any teacher could teach any subject, regardless of their background. We changed that by initiating a process of counselling whereby teachers were identified by their academic background and designated to teach that subject. It has really helped students,” Devnani said.