PANAJI
The blame for poor performance of Goa's school students in comparison to the national average was on Thursday summarily placed on the shoulders of teachers as Chief Minister Pramod Sawant hinted at introducing 'accountability'.
Sawant was addressing heads of schools from across the State at the State-level conference on the National Education Policy (NEP) for heads of schools.
“Why are students scoring below the national average? Who is to be blamed? People are blaming the government," Sawant, who holds the education portfolio asked the educationists.
He said, henceforth teachers will be held accountable for the poor performance of students whose average score is far below the national average, especially in Mathematics and Science subjects.
The recently released National Achievement Survey (NAS) report for the year 2021 has reported Goa's average score significantly lower than the national average for classes III, V, VIII and X in mathematics.
Goan students scored 299/500 in mathematics, where the national average is 306. In class V it was 274 as against the national score of 284.
Sawant lamented that the performance is poor despite the government providing all the necessary infrastructure and facilities to schools and teachers.
The chief minister also found fault with institutions for “focussing only on achieving 100 per cent results.
"Schools should adopt a cooperative rather than a competitive approach. No student should feel neglected," Sawant said, adding that education must be skill-based to ensure students are human resource ready.
The chief minister said, he had been closely monitoring the functioning of the Education department ever since he became Chief Minister and kept the education portfolio with him.
In many institutions, students he said are being made to take a drop in class IX to ensure 100 % results in class X.
"Who will worry about the dropouts? Who will prepare that human resource?,” Sawant asked, expressing concern over the State's dropout problem.
Meanwhile, Sawant said, the new National Education Policy (NEP) will be implemented in institutions of higher education, including professional colleges from next year, he said, adding that it will ensure 'quality' education.
Dwelling on the recent controversy of closure of schools, Sawant said the State government does not intend to close schools to benefit other schools.
“We want to address concerns of students with fewer teachers,” Sawant said, adding that some academic institutions were increasing classrooms for standard streams like Arts and Science to accommodate some teachers.
He opined that institutions should instead start new courses in emerging fields so that students have scope for vertical mobility.
The conference of heads of schools was organised by the Goa Headmasters Association.
