PRAYAGRAJ The state education department will now focus on forming and nurturing unique partnerships between rural primary and upper primary schools and their semi-urban and urban counterparts in the days to come, department officials said.
The aim of the exercise will be to enable primary school students to have a different atmosphere, check monotony, and to encourage and motivate them towards positive thinking, said a senior official of UP education department requesting anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The ‘Partnership Between Schools’ programme sponsored by the union ministry of human resource development strives to link government-run schools located in rural areas with private and aided government schools in urban and semi-urban areas. The aim is to help bring all students on one common platform and to help share experiences and learn from each other, he explained.
In a meeting of Project Approval Board of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan held at Shastri Bhawan in New Delhi in June 2019, senior officials representing the UP government had given their commitment in this regard as part of the annual work plan and this is now being taken up on a priority, the official said.
Another official aware of the development said, “Under this new initiative, students of the identified primary and upper primary schools will visit the selected partner school and vice-versa once a month. If the identified school is from a rural area, its pairing school will be selected from an urban locality. This arrangement is to provide an opportunity to students from a rural background to understand the situation prevailing in urban areas and vice-versa.”
{{/usCountry}}Another official aware of the development said, “Under this new initiative, students of the identified primary and upper primary schools will visit the selected partner school and vice-versa once a month. If the identified school is from a rural area, its pairing school will be selected from an urban locality. This arrangement is to provide an opportunity to students from a rural background to understand the situation prevailing in urban areas and vice-versa.”
{{/usCountry}}Welcoming the move, Vasubandhu Singh, teacher, Model Upper Primary School, Central Pedagogical Institute, Prayagraj said that today there is a great divide between the rural and the city children that needs to be bridged and communication between them bettered. “This initiative can play an important role in bridging this gap and needs to be implemented effectively,” he added.