BHUBANESWAR: The State Government will give away awards to better performing school teachers and field functionaries. It will be taken up on a pilot basis in 300 schools of the State.
This was decided at the executive committee meeting of Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) here on Thursday. Chairing the meeting, Chief Secretary Gokul Chandra Pati asked the School and Mass Education Department to strengthen evaluation and monitoring of various projects being implemented by the authority. The meeting decided to take up third party concurrent evaluation of the programmes along with improvement in teaching and learning outcome.
On the occasion, Additional Chief Secretary (Finance), R Balakrishnan suggested adoption of technology enabled teaching-learning system developed by IIT-Madras for carrying forward qualitative improvement.
Secretary of School and Mass Education Department Usha Padhi said e-books or digital books of Class-1 to Class-X will be made available in e-Basta (www.ebasta.in) in a phased manner with technical assistance from Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
The e-books can be downloaded in PDF format to ePub, Kindle, iPad and smart phones free of cost.
The meeting decided to strengthen the video conferencing system of OPEPA for imparting refresher and orientation training to teachers on a regular basis. Various subject experts and scientists of national and international repute coming to the city can also be roped in for interaction with teachers and students through the video conferencing, which will provide wider exposure to students in Government schools.
The committee also reviewed the progress of different schemes of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) during 2014-15. The State has utilised the total funds of `1,377.16 crore sanctioned under SSA during last fiscal.
The committee approved the annual work plan with a budget of `2,321 crore for 2015-16. The major interventions in the annual action plan includes construction of toilets, residential hostels, transport and escort facility, special training, seasonal hostels, free text books, free uniform, inclusive education, teachers training, learning enhancement programmes, community mobilisation and girl child education.