CHENNAI: The school education department has come out with a new standard operating procedure (SOP) for training government school students for competitive examinations such as Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). Students will be taught Botany/Maths on Mondays, Physics on Tuesdays, Zoology/Maths on Wednesdays, and Chemistry on Thursdays. Tests will be conducted every week on Friday from 4 PM to 5.30 PM.
For the current academic year, the training programme will start this week and question papers of objective-type questions for all subjects have been sent to schools, sources said. “We are starting the training for competitive examination now as most of the portions have been completed,” a senior official from the education department said.
As per the SOP, committees will be formed at state, district and school levels to help prepare materials for training and to oversee the scheme. Classes will also be held during half-yearly and annual exam holidays for interested students.
At the school level, committees will be headed by headmasters and they will have PG teachers of major subjects as members. Retired teachers and students who have passed any of the entrance exams can also be included as members. While HMs and teachers can encourage students to attend the training programme, students should not be forced, according to the SOP released by the joint director (vocational) of school education.
At the district level, committees will be headed by chief education officers. The panels will have 10 teachers including two subject experts each from Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Botany and Zoology. PA to the CEO (higher secondary) will function as the member-secretary of the committee, collate data of students taking part in the training, and coordinate the overall preparatory work for different competitive exams. A headmaster will also be part of the committee.
The joint director (vocational) will coordinate the efforts of the educational committee at the state level. The state-level committee will frame a guideline for schools for choosing interested students and will also prepare the timetable for training. It will prepare model question papers and answers, and videos required for training the students. The joint director will also monitor the implementation of the scheme at the state and district levels with the help of the committees. Training will be conducted at block level during holidays, the SOP said.
Several teachers' associations said the workload for PG teachers will increase if NEET training is included as part of the school activities. Instead, the department should deploy additional teachers at the block level and train the students, they added.