NEW DELHI: Delhi Deputy Chief Ministerv Manish Sisodia today initiated the process of meetings with the newly elected School Management Committee (SMC) members.
The process titled – SMC Dialogue – began with Sisodia meeting more than 150 newly elected members.
According to government, for the first time in the history of Delhi, elections have been held in 1100 government and government aided schools to elect the SMCs, in which 75 per cent of the 16,000 elected members are parents.
The SMC concept is aimed at increasing the participation of parents in the functioning of schools.
Sisodia, who is also the Education minister, said SMC will be a monitoring body, which will function as eyes and ears of the Department of Education in schools.
A senior government official said that the SMC will meet once in two months, in which progress report of the school and implementation of the School Development Plan will be reviewed.
The official said that SMC will conduct a social audit of the accounts of the schools, particularly about the utilisation of government grants.
"In first of its kind participatory process, more than one lakh parents participated in the voting process to elect the SMCs," the official said.
Government said that the elections were a formal exercise in which nomination papers were filled up and scrutinised, which was followed by voting on a widely publicised fixed date of August 14 in all the schools.
It was mandatory for each candidate to get his/her nomination paper proposed by at least 10 parent proposers. The Department of Education had appointed observers in every school to supervise the election process.
Sisodia said the process was "historic" since for the first time participation of parents has been witnessed at a mass scale, adding that increased participation of parents is essential to improve the schools in Delhi.
"AAP government does not believe in leaving the school education system in the hands of a few officials, which has led to such a sorry state of affair so far," he said.