Academic monitoring in aided and government schools in the State is going to be strengthened this year with the General Education Department proposing documentation of the process through videos and photos.
Guidelines for the purpose were issued to teachers and officials recently. The monitoring will have to be conducted without prior notice to the schools. All the district educational officers (DEO) and assistant educational officers (AEO) should prepare a calendar for the monitoring of schools in their jurisdiction. School Resource Groups (SRG), a forum for discussing and resolving the academic-level problems faced by teachers, should meet every week and devise plans for academic excellence.
The monitoring committees at the sub-district level should have the AEOs as their conveners, block programme officers, faculty from the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET), and representatives from the Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) as members. The committees at the educational district level should be headed by the DEOs. Samagra Shiksha programme officers, DIET faculty and KITE representatives should be its members. At the district level, they should be headed by the deputy director of education (DDE) and DIET principal, among others, are members.
The DDEs have been told to call meetings of officials by the fifth of every month to chalk out the monitoring plan in advance and they should be e-mailed to the Director of General Education. They should also visit at least two schools in a month. At the educational district and sub-district levels, at least eight schools should be covered. The officials have been told to prepare PowerPoint presentations at review meetings to discuss the advantages and disadvantages and the suggestions to overcome them. The videos and photos documented in the course of the monitoring process should be shared at the State, district and sub-district level meetings of officials, the guidelines said.
