CHENNAI: The School Education department has restructured the administrative power of the field-level officers to avoid overlapping jurisdictions, according to an order issued by the principal secretary of the School Education Department on Friday.
Under the present set-up, there is an unequal distribution of workload for different officers of the same level, he told Express.
“We have many parallel streams of structure. An officer inspecting an Anglo-Indian school in one village won’t inspect the elementary school in the neighbourhood. But an officer inspecting elementary school will have many schools to inspect,” he said. To rectify this, we’ve restructured the jurisdiction of field officers, he said.
Even eight years after government’s implementation of Samcheer Kalvi in 2010, Anglo-Indian Schools and Matriculation Schools continue to come under the jurisdiction of corresponding officers. The different field officers right now are Chief Educational Officers (CEO), District Educational Officers (DEO), District Elementary Educational Officers (DEEO), Inspector of Anglo Indian School (IAS), Inspector of Matriculation Schools (IMS) and Assistant Elementary Education Officer (AEEOs).
The powers of all these officers will be streamlined to only three field officers: CEO, DEO and Block Education Officer (BEO). The CEO will have powers to administer all kinds of schools. The DEO shall assume powers of DEEO, IMS and IAS as they are equivalent in rank and pay-scale. Each DEO will get similar number of schools. AEEO is renamed as BEO and they would inspect all schools in their marked jurisdictions.
The new restructuring is more spatially logical and economically less expensive, he said. Under the new delegation of power, the CEO has a lot of power and headmasters will be answerable to various education officers making more schools more accountable. “Many schools are mushrooming as the inspectors’ jurisdictional areas are far. This way, all DEO will have similar number of cases to handle making it more organised,” he added.