CHENNAI: In its efforts to ensure the demands put forth by the school management committees (SMCs) are taken seriously, the school education department has formed a state-level monitoring committee (SLMC) headed by the chief secretary to systematically address and resolve the requirements raised.
The committee, formed through a GO dated November 22, 2023, will have the school education department secretary as member secretary and will have secretaries of 11 other departments as its members.
The SLMC will monitor, review and resolve the requirements raised by SMCs under various categories such as infrastructure, teaching-learning, enrolment-retention and school management. It will conduct meetings once in three months or as needed. Earlier, the department had released another government order stating that development activities in schools should be carried out based on the SMC resolutions.
The formation of SMCs in government and aided schools for the purpose of their overall development and monitoring of schools was mandated under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. In Tamil Nadu, the school management committees were reconstituted in April and July, 2022, as a flagship initiative of the school education department to enhance the participation of the community in the development of schools.
The RTE Act empowers the respective SMCs to monitor working of the schools, prepare and recommend development plans, monitor the utilisation of grants received from the government, local authorities or any other source, and perform other functions relating to effective functioning of the schools. Since the reconstitution of SMCs, parents and schools have come together to discuss the needs of the children, passed resolutions and have recorded the same in the TNSED Parents mobile application.
In the past 14 months, 3 lakh requests from 33,550 schools across the state have been recorded, the GO said. The number includes 2,689 high schools, 2,589 higher secondary schools, 6,359 middle schools and 21,904 primary schools.
The envisioned SLMC is intended to serve as a unified platform, incorporating representatives from diverse departments. Its primary goal is to facilitate collaborative efforts and streamline communication channels, thereby effectively addressing and resolving the challenges confronted by the schools. The committee will include secretaries of various departments including finance, PWD, rural development, municipal administration, health and family welfare, social welfare, transport, energy and others, the GO added.