A total of 210 schools from Ludhiana district have been selected to participate in the National Achievement Survey (NAS) examination scheduled for November 12 throughout the country. Students of Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10 from government and private schools will take the exam.
According to a senior official, representatives of the central government shortlisted the schools on the basis of a set criteria. As many as 337 field invigilators have been appointed for the exam in Ludhiana, including teachers, lecturers, block mentors, district mentors and representatives from the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET). “There will be two invigilators for Class 3 students and one each for Classes 8 and 10,” an official stated.
District education officer Lakhvir Singh Samra on Saturday chaired a meeting with the field invigilators at a KVM senior secondary school here, where the teachers were briefed about their roles.
Meanwhile, a special training session was held for the field invigilators, school nodal officers and block nodal officers by Subodh Verma, district mentor for English, Sanjeev Taneja, DM for math and Jasvir Singh, DM for science.
“Training was imparted pertaining to OMR sheets, IDs of the students, teachers and other important aspects of exam. The state education department has left no stone unturned to prepare the students and teachers for NAS and we are hopeful of bagging the top spot in the country,” said Samra.
{{/usCountry}}“Training was imparted pertaining to OMR sheets, IDs of the students, teachers and other important aspects of exam. The state education department has left no stone unturned to prepare the students and teachers for NAS and we are hopeful of bagging the top spot in the country,” said Samra.
{{/usCountry}}The department had also distributed NAS booklets to teachers and students so that they can prepare for the exam. With just five days left for the exams, schools have started revision.
However, a few teachers criticised the NAS, terming it a political agenda to woo voters in the state. A teacher, on the condition of anonymity, said, “The mainstream syllabus has been completely neglected. It is a matter of great concern that students in many schools have not got their NCERT textbooks, but they have been bombarded with NAS booklets”.
He added that the teachers made mockery of the NAS revision tests, as they fill the OMR sheets themselves to portray excellent results. “There is lot of political pressure on the education secretary to get the top result in NAS, even if teachers have to ignore the mainstream syllabus,”the teacher stated.
The newly-appointed Punjab secretary of school education, Ajoy Sharma, had recently had held a special meeting with all district education officers of the state. He asked them to take responsibility for ongoing NAS preparations in the state, following which Ludhiana DEO directed the field teams appointed to check NAS preparations at schools to take their visits seriously.