Eluro, March 23: Quality in elementary education — one of the major thrust areas of the Rajiv Vidya Mission dominated the proceedings of a stakeholders’ meeting held here on Tuesday.
The learning skills of Class V students were put to test even in the presence of district officials, including Collector A. Vani Prasad, Joint Collector P. Venkatarami Reddy and Additional Joint Collector M.V. Seshubabu. But the officials were not impressed with their performance.
The meeting was convened by the school-level Academic Monitoring Committee involving students, teachers, parents and the local public representatives for quality appraisal at Satrampadu. School headmistress G. Mary admitted that of the 60-member Class V, around 40 students were categorised as poor learners under B and C Grades.
Almost all the students belonging to these two categories failed to write or read even two and three-letter words properly in their mother tongue when asked by the Collector and the Joint Collector.
But the parents on the monitoring panel claimed that all was well with their wards and said they had no complaints about the performance of teachers. Grilled by the Collector, the teachers sought to blame it on the parents.
“We are doing well and working overtime in school, fine-tuning the learning skills of students.
The lack of academic quality is due to poor parental intervention at home,” Ms. Mary said.
West Godavari district has received Rs. 172 crore under the Rajiv Vidya Mission during the year to give a facelift to primary education in terms of infrastructure development and quality improvement, etc.
The district administration has decided to constitute the Academic Monitoring Committees right from the district to the school level to ensure public participation in monitoring the school management which include monitoring the performance of both teachers and the students.
-Agencies