Announced in November to rein in the dropout rate, education experts slam Mahrashtra government for lack of machinery required to implement the plan
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State government’s selfie move to stop school students from dropping out has gone nowhere beyond an announcement. In November, it had made it mandatory for teachers to take a ‘selfie with 10 students’ every Monday from January 2017 and upload it on Systematic Administrative Reforms for Achieving Learning by Students (SARAL) website. The new year’s first Monday has come and gone, there’s no sign of any selfie.
All talk, no show
The initiative, according to educationists, seems to be just another addition to the list of “fancy announcements” made by the state education department with hardly any attention given to their implementation.
In a recent assembly session, the department was slammed over the allegation that it’s hiding the correct number of out-of-school children, yet no action seems to been taken to address the issue and implement key policies.
Well-known educationist Heramb Kulkarni, who has been working to bring the dropouts back to mainstream education, said, “The state government has been conducting its surveys half-heartedly. Every time, the number of dropouts it declares is proven incorrect. When the basic process is taken so casually, taking a selfie with students to ensure they attend classes is just another initiative and is bound to be forgotten.”
“These are just becoming fancy announcements by the education department in its attempt to involve technology. But little is done about preparing the machinery required for implementation,” he added.
Uninitiated initiatives
Kulkarni also mentioned other initiatives, such as bringing teachers’ training online or on WhatsApp by stopping conventional workshops; now, neither is being done. He talked about the RTE admissions, which were made online to ensure transparency, but said that those entitled for seats are unable to take admission due to computer illiteracy and that there is no adequate machinery to help them.
Spokesperson for Shikshak Bharati Uday Nare said, “A mobile application has been started to update students’ attendance, so that there will be centralised data, which is transparent. But how do they plan to implement it is the question. Whether all teachers have smartphones equipped with the software to run the app is the first issue. And who will take the responsibility of providing teachers with Internet connection on the phones?”
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