Smriti Irani announces child tracking, other school initiatives

New Delhi: The HRD ministry is bringing in a child tracking system for over 200 million children across the country which will be used to monitor their progress from one class to another and also identify drop outs.

"Introducing a child tracking system for over 200 million children all across the country to track movement class to class, identify drop outs," HRD minister Smriti Irani said in a series of tweets today on the initiatives taken by her ministry in the field of school education.

In another tweet, Irani said that due to Right to Education, the concept of bridge schools was discontinued "which disabilitated entrance of out of school children into the school system (sic)."

Moving to other initiatives of the HRD ministry, Irani said that rather than monitoring the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the programme for achievement of universalisation of elementary education, annually as was done during the UPA, her ministry would track it online daily.

"We did mid term review online. This year we shall track SSA daily online. Real time data will help engage productively with states," she said in.

Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan under UPA regime was monitored once a year and was not facilitating solutions real time, she added.

Irani also annouced that her ministry is developing an expenditure portal that centralises various sources of school education data in India. She also mentioned a first of its kind portal for Teacher Education Institutions which will ensure transparency and grading.

The HRD minister said her ministry is supporting states to help build composite schools by rationalising stand alone schools with low enrollment and one teacher.

"Smaller schools are either mentored by larger schools in same geographical area or are merged in the interest of students," she tweeted.

She also announced that the National Assessment Survey (NAS) which was done once in three years by NCERT, will now be done annually.

NAS, henceforth, will be competency based, she said in a tweet adding that states are to do assessment in all schools from classes 1 to 8.

"Learning outcome portal being designed by NCERT which will have videos so that outcomes are easily comprehended n tests voluntarily taken," she tweeted.

In another message, Irani mentioned said the Shala Siddhi scheme of her ministry will be extended to all schools.

"Under Shaala Siddhi school evaluation was undertaken since November 2015. This year we shall extend it to all schools across the country," she said.