With an aim to make primary education simple and interactive, the Bihar government has tied up with the UNICEF. Launched under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan in November last year, the UNICEF-devised Leaning Enhancement Programme (LEP), jointly funded by the state and Central governments, has started functioning across 135 schools in five districts of Vaishali, Purnea, Banka, Samastipur and Gaya since last one month.
Embarrassed by 15,000 primary school teachers failing to clear the last two competency tests (in which under-class five questions were asked and a minimum 30 per cent marks were required to be scored to qualify for promotion) as well as the overall poor quality of primary education in the state, the government is all geared up to make sure that all students from class one to four are covered under the programme.
The one-year programme will be extended to other schools in a phased manner and will become a permanent feature to ensure quality of education
Under the programme, teachers will have subject-wise growth profile of each student. Parents will be informed at regular intervals about the progress or lack of improvement of their wards.
Parents will be able to register their complaints with Block Education Officers and District Superintendents of education. Thus, it’s not merely regular attendance of teachers but also their teaching abilities that will be under the scanner of the parents.
Before the programme was introduced, primary school teachers were trained by the personnel of the Block Resource Centre and Cluster Resource Centre, two immediate levels to monitor quality of education. Officials from District Institute of Education and Training, Bihar Education Project Council (BEPC) and UNICEF representatives visited school to ‘teach’ the teachers.
The government started a toll-free helpline at State Council of Education, Research and Training to help teachers.
Bihar Education Project Council Special Project Director Rajesh Bhushan said, “Once we achieved our main aim of getting back out-of-school children, we focussed on quality of education.â€
Bhushan said intervention schemes such as LEP will not only improve quality but also get community involvement in monitoring education quality. LEP, he said, will work two-way — enabling teachers to focus on each student in a classroom and involving parents to keep pressure on teachers to ensure quality. Bhushan said teaching Hindi, English, science and mathematics have been simplified through the LEP. “Every teacher has a booklet on each chapter,†he said.