HYDERABAD: As the schools in the State reopens for the Academic Year 2010-11, on Monday, the Chief Minister Dr K Rosaiah mooted a 6-Point Action Plan for the teachers and School Education Department. Enlisting his Action Plan for improving the School Education as a whole in the State, particularly in the Government Schools, the Chief Minister said there should be:

1.a constant and close monitoring of attendance in the schools, both of teachers and students;
2.all text books to all classes should be made available on the day of the reopening of schools,
3.teaching standards in the schools should be improved,
4.all available schemes and programmes like SSA should be made use of to improve the infrastructure facilities in the schools,
5.Parents-Teachers Committees should see that the standards of Government schools should catch up with that of private and Corporate schools,
6.Drop-outs in the schools also should be put an end to.

The Chief Minister who is launching the 'badibata' programme on the 14-6-2010 Monday said the State Government is spending huge funds towards Education, particularly School Education in the State. The State is also leveraging funds from the Government of India schemes like Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyaan (RMSA) for increasing infrastructure like School Buildings, Compound Walls, and for recruitment of  teachers etc. "Every paise must be spent judiciously for the welfare of the students", Dr Rosaiah said.

The Chief Minister today discussed the issues pertaining to School Education on the eve of Opening of the Schools with Minister for Secondary Education, Manikya Varaprasad, Secretary, School Education, Dr. Sambasiva Rao and in-charge Director, School Education, Satyanarayana and other officials. The Chief Minister wished the students all the very best in the new academic year.

The Chief Minister recalled his childhood days in Guntur District when school reopening day was like a day of festival. Dr Rosaiah reminded that during the earlier days, Government Schools were equal or better than the private schools not only in maintaining high standards, imparting education but also in achieving high percentage of results. The Chief Minister said that top leaders like former Presidents Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, Dr Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, K R Narayanan, APJ Abdul Kalam, Dr Zakir Hussain and others studied in Government schools. There are many Chief Ministers, Union Ministers, top Scientists and Politicians who had their early education in Government Schools.

The Chief Minister expressed satisfaction that school and secondary education in the State of late has been vastly improved, universalisation of elementary education has been achieved to a very large extent, especially in terms of access to schooling and improvement in gross enrolment ratio, especially of girls and those belonging to the marginalised group. With the enactment of Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, it is expected that issues of drop-out, out-of-school children, quality of education and availability of trained teachers would be addressed in the short to medium term. Gender Parity at the elementary stage has improved appreciably.

The Chief Minister was informed by the officials that concerted efforts were made in all the schools in the State with a well-knitted field functionaries monitoring system to take the elementary education to the nearest place of residence of the school-going aged children, even in remote, tribal and hillock areas. It is also a matter of satisfaction that Andhra Pradesh has attained 100% access by providing at-least One Primary School within the reach of 1 km.  Today any child in any part of Andhra Pradesh can access to a school within 1 km. radius. The School Education Department is committed to providing quality education from Class I to X for all the school-going age children in the State, including general and linguistic minorities, and other disadvantaged groups.

As far as textbooks distribution is concerned, 509.01 lakh Text Books were dispatched to District Point which is 100.38% of the requirement for the 2010 -2011academic year. Instructions were issued to the District Educational Officers to ensure that the books are distributed to the students on the re-opening day i.e. 14.06.2010 itself. On the recommendations of cabinet sub-committee, action is being taken to fill up all the notified posts of DSC-2008 comprising Secondary Grade Teachers (SGT).i.e. 30,704. This will improve quality of  Education in Govt. and Local Body schools.

The information and Communication Technology (ICT) @ 5000 schools project is being implemented on Build, Own, Operate & Transfer (BOOT) Model from 2008-2009 by seven agencies i.e, 1. NIIT Ltd., Hyderabad, 2. IEG, Hyderabad, 3. Educomp Solutions Ltd., New Delhi, 4. Everonn education Ltd., Chenni, 5. Terasoftware Ltd., Hyderabad, 6. Social Computers, Guntur and 7. ECIL, Hyderabad. Total cost of the project is Rs.460 Crores  for Five Years Period from 2008-09 to 2012-13 (including service charges, purchase of Software and Acceptance Test, etc.). The same project at  1300 schools project is being implemented on BOOT Model from 2010-2011 by these 7 agencies. Massive training programme for the School Assistants handling classes 9th and 10th for all Govt. and Local Body schools was organized in Summer 2010 and 50,000 teachers have been trained with the main objective of improving quality in our secondary schools.  This training programme is a continuous process and every teacher will be trained for 5 days every year.