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Around 300 schools adopted under Odisha's adoption programme
Over 200 bureaucrats, judges and lawmakers have adopted around 300 schools, weeks after the Odisha government announced a schools adoption programme to improve their standards.
Over 200 bureaucrats, judges and lawmakers have adopted around 300 schools, weeks after the Odisha government announced a schools adoption programme to improve their standards.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik on January 25 called on everyone to adopt schools and help students of government and aided schools to stay motivated and dream big to transform the state’s educational system. The adoption is part of the Mo School programme launched in November 2017 to boost the education system with the involvement of alumni and the general public. Around 40,00,00 alumni have raised ₹60 crore under the programme.
The state government last month started the adoption programme under which individuals can adopt a maximum of three schools for improvement in the academic and co-curricular activities.
"An institution to become world-class needs physical, digital, intellectual and emotional infrastructure. All these components are interlinked and complementary to each other. School adoption programme brings everyone together to help build all the four components so that government schools can excel. The school adoption programme would leverage the intellectual capital and professional success of the alumni," said Mo School programme's member secretary Bhupendra Singh Poonia. He added 224 people have so far adopted 292 schools.
Lawmaker Pranab Prakash Das, Odisha Skill Development Authority chairman Subroto Bagchi, and chief secretary Suresh Mohapatra are among those who have adopted schools.
The state has 67,961 schools up to class 10.
Officials said the adoption programme is expected to take care of the falling academic quality in government schools.
According to the 2018 National Achievement Survey, only 53% of students in Odisha were able to answer questions on basic competencies correctly.
Poonia said he expects the number of adopted schools to cross over 1,000 in the next six months. "The response has been very encouraging so far. Any Indian citizen with wide experience and exposure can adopt schools. The adopting person is expected to be a mentor and influencer and not be involved in any administrative or financial activities."
The mentors adopting schools can arrange coaching classes for certain subjects, career counselling sessions, tie-ups, inspirational talks and cash awards to motivate the students.
