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Basic education revamp, honest teachers, officials responsible for top slot: UP minister
UP is the only state in country to witness rise in school enrollments even during Covid-induced lockdown, he says.
Basic education minister Satish Dwivedi on Saturday said Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) basic education sector is now ranked number one in the country and attributed this to the revamp of the sector undertaken by the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.
“The success is also due to honest and hardworking teachers as well as officials of the department,” he said while speaking at the opening ceremony of the Kapilvastu Mahotsav in Sidharth Nagar, the minister’s hometown.
“UP is the only state in country to witness rise in school enrollments even during Covid-induced lockdown,” he said.
“As per union education ministry’s report, UP’s basic education that was ranked fifth with 650 marks in 2018, has now jumped to number one spot bagging 860 marks. We intend to take it to one plus-plus category. And that’s why we have recruited one lakh twenty-five thousand teachers. Recruitment process is going on for teachers in inter colleges,” he said.
The minister said that Basic Shiksha Parishad schools in city and villages have been revamped under the ‘kayakalp yojna’.
With facilities like smart classes along with introduction of concepts like regular parent teachers’ meetings, annual functions, mid-day meal monitoring committees, these government schools are giving competition to convent schools.
“In UP government schools, the children of poor and labourers are now able to attend smart classes and avail facilities including quality education which until now were available only in convent schools. That’s why now, many parents are shifting their children from private schools to convent ones,” he said. “Recently I inspected a Basic Shiksha Parishad school in Varanasi’s Sevapuri block which is adopted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There I was surprised to find a woman teacher who was also a qualified BDS doctor. When I asked her why she was working as a teacher despite having a medical degree, she said she had a passion for teaching. She praised the transparent recruitment process where she got selected on merit,” he said.
Dwivedi said that Sidhdharthngar, which once used to be a backward region, now boasts of a medical college, university and will soon become the only district of purvanchal to have three national highways.
