Programme to monitor students' progress starts
Tribune News Service

CHANDIGARH, Sept 3 — The UT Education Department has launched a programme to monitor the academic performance of top 20 students of classes VIII, X and XII in various government model schools, to help bring a significant improvement in their results of the board examinations. The programme will shortly be extended to 20 weak students at the lowest rung to raise their level of performance above the required pass percentage.

The programme has been initiated by the DPI ( Schools), Mr D.S Saroya,with the help of a few principals of government model senior secondary schools in sectors 33, 23, 10, 35, 46, 16 and 18. The round-the-clock monitoring of these students is being done under the direct supervision of the school principals during the session.

Mr Saroya says that the experiment has been undertaken in line with the instructions mentioned in the 10th fundamental duty,which says ``to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher level of endeavour and achievement.''

To begin with,the top 20 students of these classes were asked to submit their time tables ,specifying their daily routine. Subsequently, the principals after counselling them effected some changes in the time table, to make it more effective and copies of the revised time tables were then given to the student, parents and the teacher concerned. The focus of this time table is more on the out-of-school activities of the student between 2 pm and 8 am. In this exercise also, attention was paid to planning the schedule in such a way that students are made to revise those subjects in the morning, which they find tough as the mind is fresh and understanding is better. They were also told how dinner and watching television could be combined to save time.

While working out the time tables, the available time was judiciously divided for doing homework, play and watching television. However, keeping in view the adverse effects of television on impressionable minds, it was specified that they should watch programmes on Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and Sports Channel.

While the top five students, shortlisted on the basis of the percentage of marks obtained in the previous class have been put under the direct supervision of the school principal, the remaining 15 have also been divided into groups of three and put under the care of three other teachers, from their respective classes for this exercise.

These teachers, besides monitoring their performance in the class are required to make telephone calls to these students at their homes and check on whether they are following the set time tables or not.The teachers have complete address and telephone numbers of students under their care so that they can check on them anytime.

However, the experiment can not yield the desired results without the help of parents, who are required to assist the principal and teachers in the implementation of the time tables, particularly after school hours. As a result, parents of the selected students were also explained about the scheme and how it is to be implemented in right earnest.

Mr Saroya is confident of the success of the programme. He explains that the concept of passline is subjective for in certain schools the pass line may be as high as above 85 per cent, while in case of others it can be just 45 per cent. Hence, efforts should be to effect a minimum of 5-10 per cent improvement in their existing results. In case of weak students, the level of improvement could be even higher.

A separate programme to monitor their performance will be shortly charted out by the department and students will be shortlisted on the basis of their performance in the forthcoming September examinations. In this case also the group of 20 students will be divided between the principal and three other teachers.