Indore (Madhya Pradesh)
Starting with Indore and Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh is all set to boost its education system under STARS project of the World Bank.
MP is among the six states selected for the programme.
Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States (STARS) project of Ministry of Education was signed between Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) and World Bank along with Ministry of Education.
The Rs 5,718 crore project will have the financial support of World Bank amounting to US $ 500 million (approximately Rs 3,700 crore) and rest coming from the participating states over a period of 5 years.
District education officer Manglesh Vyas had a meeting with the state education centre for implementation of the project, on Monday.
“The project will help in improving assessment systems, facilitating school-to-work transition, strengthening classroom instruction and remediation, decentralising management and strengthening the governance,” he said.
Vyas shared that the project aims at improving the overall monitoring and measurement activities in the Indian school education system through interventions in selected states. “STARS will draw on the existing structure under Samagra Shiksha,” he said.
“A State Incentive Grant (SIG) will be used to encourage states to meet desired project outcomes,” Vyas said adding that an independent verification agency (IVA) will verify each result before disbursement of funds,” Vyas said.
//Girl education campaign on wider scale
The educational need of girls and marginalised groups is another focus of this project. “With that being a major aim aligning with state’s objective, we will conduct more activities to ensure that every girl in our district and state is attending schools, including running campaigns in rural areas,” Vyas said.
He added that there are several educational campaigns and programmes being planned so that teachers and other faculties reach out to these ignored groups and especially girls.
//Teacher’s training is the key\\
“One of the major challenges faced by education system is teaching skills because we can manage the infrastructure and everything with funds, but good teachers are the roots of an education system,” Vyas said. He added that teachers need to be skilled to educate a child. The environment is important but not as much as learning and teaching.
“We have already started teachers’ evaluation and it has clearly shown good results, so a lot more work on teachers’ training will be undertaken in the coming years,” Vyas said.
