STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: The first phase of Gunotsav 2023, the initiative of Assam's Department of School Education for ensuring quality education with improved learning outcome through the identification of learning gaps and devising effective strategies for remedial measures, got underway in various Government/provincialized schools, tea garden management schools, Adarsha Vidyalayas, tea garden model schools, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Avasiya Vidyalayas across 11 districts of the State on Wednesday.
The first day entailed self evaluation of the schools concerned. The external evaluation process will be held in the schools of these 11 districts - Barpeta, Karimganj, Kamrup, Karbi Anglong, Kokrajhar, Lakhimpur, Majuli, Nagaon, Sivasagar, South Salmara Mankachar and Udalguri - on January 19, January 20 and January 2.
The second phase of Guntosav 2023 will be held from February 1 to February 4 and cover the Baksa, Chirang, Charaideo, Dhemaji, Dhubri, Golaghat, Hojai (part of Nagaon district), Hailakandi, Jorhat, Kamrup (M), Sonitpur, Tinsukia and West Karbi Anglong districts.
The third phase from February 15 to February 18 will cover the Biswanath (part of Sonitpur district), Bongaigaon, Darrang, Dibrugarh, Dima Hasao, Goalpara, Cachar, Nalbari and Morigaon districts.
The goals of Gunotsav 2023 include identifying learning gaps of each child and ensuring quality education with grade-specific learning outcomes; assessing the performance of schools in various areas - scholastic, co-scholastic, availability and utilization of infrastructure, community participation and contributions etc; ensuring greater participation of all stakeholders starting from teachers, students, administrators, communities and enhance accountability among them for quality education; and supporting the school and education system to improve the quality of education and ensure better functioning of schools.
A total of 44,525 schools and 42,76,881 students from Class-I to Class-IX will be evaluated in the three phases. The external evaluators will randomly select 20 per cent students for each of the three skills (reading, writing and numeracy) and will assess their performance. The remaining 80 per cent students will be evaluated by the school authority in presence of and under the close supervision of the external evaluators.
For this purpose, a total of 18,097 external evaluators will be deployed across the State. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, along with ministers, MPs, MLAs, CEMs, EMs and senior officers will take part in the event to encourage the students as well as teachers.
It is pertinent to mention that the Department of School Education recently notified that weightage of 10 per cent marks from Guntosav 2023 will be considered for annual examinations of schools "for ensuring importance of Gunotsav and improvement of quality of education". Earlier, the schools were merely graded according to assessment. From now on, however, students will be awarded some marks which will have 10 per cent weightage in the annual examinations.
It may be further mentioned that Assam's Education Minister Ranoj Pegu recently said that there is strong ground for suspecting the existence of a sizeable number of 'ghost students' (fictitious students) in various Government and provincialized schools of the State and said that emphasis will be laid on identifying them during Gunotsav 2023.
He had said, "Absenteeism of up to 5 per cent is acceptable, but if that figure crosses 20 per cent then it becomes suspicious. Therefore, we have decided that during the ensuing Guntosav, even absent students will be taken into account while grading the school concerned". He had said that hitherto the evaluation was done based on students present during Gunotsav, but from now on the grading will be based on the official enrollment of students in the school concerned, with absent students being considered as having failed. This system is expected to facilitate weeding out of 'ghost students', Pegu had added.
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