GUWAHATI: Schools that secure A+ grades in Gunotsav for two years in a row from the year 2023 will be awarded a cash incentive of Rs 50,000 each, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced at the ‘Gunotsav Award 2022’ distribution ceremony at the Veterinary College Playground at Khanapara here on Sunday.
“Also, an additional teacher above the sanctioned strength will be appointed in such schools as an incentive. Further, teachers working on a contractual basis in such schools will be made permanent,” Sarma informed.
An initiative of the Department of School Education, the ‘Gunotsav Award 2022’ has been conferred on 4,841 schools that have managed to secure A+ grades in the last Gunotsav evaluation.
Each of these schools was awarded a cash incentive of Rs 25,000.
Notably, the announcement has come at a time when the number of schools securing A+ grades in Gunotsav has decreased substantially from those that secured A+ grades in the year 2018.
This year, 4,841 schools managed to secure A+ grades as against 10,678 in the year 2018, indicating a significant fall in quality and learning outcomes of the students.
Gunotsav is an initiative of the Assam government aimed at augmenting quality education and contributing towards the overall development of students.
More precisely, it aims to identify learning gaps in each child and ensure quality education with grade-specific learning outcomes; indicate learning gaps, especially during COVID-19, and design effective strategies to meet up these gaps; assess the performance of schools; ensure greater participation of all stakeholders and enhance accountability among them for quality education.
All government, provincialised and tea garden management schools of elementary and secondary level are covered under the programme. The evaluation is conducted for students of Classes I to Class IX.
Addressing the award ceremony here, the chief minister, paying rich tributes to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his 98th birth anniversary, referred to his immense contributions towards the process of nation-building.
Sarma said the Gunotsav Award 2022 is being handed over to the recipient schools so as to correlate with the observance of December 25 of every year as “Good Governance Day” throughout the country as a mark of respect towards the life and works of the great leader.
The chief minister spoke about the role of Vajpayee in the launch of Sarba Sikhsa Abhiyan during his tenure as the Prime Minister of India.
“This was a manifestation of the importance Vajpayee had accorded to the spread of quality education among all sections of the society,” Sarma said.
Referring to Gunotsav as an alternative method to measure the quality of education in schools over the traditional system of written examination, the chief minister termed it a process of continuous evaluation that enables the stakeholders to focus on the strong as well as the weak points as far as imparting education is concerned.
He termed Gunotsav a medium through which the educational environment of Assam could be radically transformed for the betterment of the state as a whole.
Appealing to the teachers and all those associated with the education department to come out of their comfort zones, Sarma said the aim of transforming Assam into one of the most progressive states on all fronts would not be possible without the equitable spread of education among all sections of the society.
The Chief Minister further added that the conferring of the Gunotsav Award was a recognition of the contribution of the teachers and school staff towards the process of nation-building.
He exuded confidence that the dedication with which the teaching fraternity has been carrying out their official obligations and duty would benefit a large number of students to achieve their goals in life.
Sarma also appealed to the teachers to work towards developing a competitive environment in their educational institutions so that more candidates from the state manage to secure seats in top educational institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, All India Institutes of Medical Science, among others, in the days to come.
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He further requested the teaching fraternity to make extensive use of the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and mixed reality, among others to make the process of imparting education a pleasant and interesting experience for the students.
Two apps, ‘Analytics Powered E-Classroom’ and ‘Siksha Setu Axom,’ which are aimed at widening the technological outreach of the education department, were also launched by the chief minister on the occasion.
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