News
State education department comes up with novel way to arrest school drop-outs.
In a bid to bring down the dropout rate at the elementary level, the School Education And Literacy (SEAL) department has come up with books in regional languages for better understanding of government school students.
The school education and literacy (SEAL) department has taken a solid step towards ensuring continuous attendance of children in schools and to arrest drop outs. It has selected around 250 schools in 6 districts of Jharkhand for educating children in the regional languages in the academic year 2016-17.
SEAL has come up with books in regional languages for better understanding of government school students studying in Class I and II. The books have already gone for printing and will be made available to the selected schools in April. The teachers of the selected schools will also be given special training in April so that they are able to utilize these books.
The schools are selected based on a study carried out in schools which showed that all the students or at least more than 90% students in these schools spoke the regional language. Department secretary Aradhana Patnaik said, "We did a survey around two years ago and found that 90% of children in primary classes are uncomfortable studying in Hindi and prefer classes in their mother tongue. This is also a major reason behind dropouts at the elementary level."
The books will be published in five languages, Santhali, Ho, Mundari, Kudukh and Khadia. The subjects for which these books will be published include Language, Mathematics and story books. Patnaik said, "We are publishing 5,000 books of each subject in each language. These will be given to the schools in addition to the regular course books."
Patnaik said, "We got requests from the people of Dumka, Pakur and Chaibasa to publish the books in both Devnagiri as well as their own scripts. However, the other languages do not have a script of their own, so the books are being published in Devnagiri script."
It seems to be the first step in the right direction. We hope more and more state education departments become sensitive to local needs of students and the teaching community. Only then will we see a much awaited revolution in education.