It’s curtains for Pervesh Project, teachers back to earlier postings

Nikhila Pant Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, March 29

Close to 1,200 ETT teachers who had been working for the Parvesh Project under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan have been sent back to the schools of their postings as the Education Department has decided to bring the curtains down on the project.

The Parvesh Project was introduced in the state to raise the standard of education in government primary schools through the use of new educational techniques.

As part of the project, smart classes were introduced in the government primary schools in the state after the Central Government had released funds to the tune of Rs 15 crore for the project.

In June 2016, the project, which was earlier run by the Director General of School Education, Punjab, was brought under the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Punjab, about seven months ago.

The deputation of Dr Devinder Boha and other teachers who had been heading the project was cancelled and they were sent back to the schools of their original postings.

Following the change of command, the project died a slow death.

The monthly agenda, which used to be sent to the schools, was also stopped, leaving the district and block-level coordinators of the project with no work.

For the past seven months, no activity calendars had been sent to the schools.

The protest and boycott of the Pervesh Project training camps by teachers proved to be last nail in the coffin.

The teachers across the state protested against the schedule of the training camps as it clashed with the annual examination schedule.

The teachers argued that while no activity was conducted in the last six-seven months, the training camps were being organised at a time when it was most important for them to attend to students and address their queries before the final examinations began.

Apart from sending back the teachers working under the project, the State Education Department has also shot off a letter to all district education officers directing them to immediately relieve the teachers engaged in non-teaching work and send them back to the schools of their original postings.

The project focused more on the process of teaching and learning than the outcome of the same. 

It designs classroom activities as per the main guidelines of the Right To Education and Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system.

The Pervesh project encouraged level-appropriate learning instead of class-based traditional system of education. 

Following the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation system, the level of learning of the students was diagnosed at the onset of the academic session through a baseline test.