KERALA: Digital classrooms, students from poor background speaking good English along with their mother tongue, special training in classical dance for talented students from the working class, a stadium for the sports promotion of students. Sounds Utopian, but, for the voters of Meenangadi panchayat, it is true.
"Through meticulous steps during the last four years, we have made giant strides in the education sector by ensuring quality without compromising on quantity," Meenangadi panchayat president Beena Vijayan says.
Beena told Express that the panchayat won the Excellence Award, instituted by the state government for the outstanding panchayats, for the last two consecutive years. With a significant population of the tribesmen, who kept off from the mainstream education, and the marginal farmers and daily labourers, the panchayat introduced a number of innovative projects for improving education.
The 'Smart School' project launched in selected government UP schools, offered all modern facilities in the classrooms for the poor, including laptops, digital cameras, handycams, projectors and stateoftheart furniture.
All the classrooms are linked with the headmaster's office through a digital sound system. In the smart schools, two selected students from each school were allowed to undergo training in modern educational tools.
"Uprooting inferiority complex, we reinstated the pride in students for being a student in a government school," panchayat member V Suresh says. "Our dream is to convert all the government schools into smart schools, if we get a second term after elections," he said.
Under the Kalapeetom project, talented students were given training from experts from Kalamandalam in classical dance, which the poor can illafford. In the first batch, 32 students completed training and their first public performance (arangettam) was held recently. The training for the second batch is under way.
Another innovative achievement is the 'Operation Olympia' project, launched for promoting the athletic talents of students. Earlier launched in the Higher Secondary School, Meenangadi, the project has been extended to all the UP and LP schools in the panchayat.
As a result, the schools in the panchayat started winning the districtlevel championships. The efforts do not end there. Spending over Rs 1 crore, a stadium complex for the students is coming up on a spacious 6.5 acres of land in the panchayat.
The study corners with all learning facilities for the tribal students in their own settlements, cluster PTA (a miniature of school PTA) at distant settlements to monitor the learning of students, the Ganitham Lalitham project for easy learning of mathematics, training in chenda for students, and Kunhikkoottam Project, where a smart student would teach the students of less learning abilities of his own agegroup, are some of the other projects successfully under way in the panchayat.
The panchayat also won the fifth position in the Green Kerala Express TV programme jointly organised by CDIT, Kila and the Kerala Sanitary Mission with the support of Doordarsan,
recently.
