Education Dept officials inspect schools based in border area

Following instructions from the School Education Department, Punjab, District Education Officer (Secondary) Harbhagwant Singh and Sub-District Education Officer (Secondary) Rajesh Khanna carried out an inspection of border schools, including the Government High School and Government Senior Secondary School, Girls, Mode village.

Navdeep Joshi, Block Resource Person and Shashi Kumar, Block Resource Person, Chougawan 1, were present along with a team of officials. The two checked the level of education of students from class 6 to 10 to gauge the effective implementation of the Competency Enhancement Plan, which was introduced across all government schools in the state earlier this year. They asked the students about the syllabus of competency enhancement programme and classroom preparation, while teachers were informed about the guidelines and shared challenges in implementation as well.

The Competency Enhancement Programme was launched following Mission Samrath, earlier this year as a tool to enhance the outcome of classroom learning, evaluating the outcomes. Competency Enhancement Programme is for students in grades 3-10, where every two weeks, the students are evaluated through a multiple choice questionnaire method, in subjects like Punjabi, Maths, Science and Social Science. The results are then uploaded by teachers on an online portal for review. The plan has been facing opposition from a segment of teachers as they call it a ‘burden’, while describing these surprise inspections as ‘raids’.