Breaking stereotypes about govt school education

Neha Saini

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Tribune news service

Amritsar, March 24

As hundreds of parents facing financial hurdles are considering shifting their wards to government schools, the district Education Department, too, is taking the lead and is set to break the stereotypes against government school education.

Adopting innovative ideas to make the ‘Each One, Bring One’ drive, currently underway in the state, successful, enrolment booster teams have also been constituted.

Reaching out to parents, these teams are adopting methods such as staging nukkad nataks, recording songs, making shortfilms highlighting the achievements of government schools to spread the message. While the bottom line is to increase the enrolments in government schools, the exercise is also helping change the perspective towards these.

Devinder Kumar, social media coordinator, Amritsar, who has been spearheading the creative campaign, says the idea was to instil confidence in government school education.

“Rather than just capitalising on the current financial pressure that private school education is putting on parents, we aim to make people aware about the infrastructure we have and academic achievement. We have performed street plays at public spaces such as Company Bagh and Anand Park, where we have received a good response. We have also recorded songs and made shortfilms that will be released soon. All this exercise will help in getting the facts right about facilities that government schools offer,” he said.

The officials of the department, school heads and teachers have been going all out and carrying out door-to-door campaigns to highlight extension and augmentation of infrastructural facilities, innovative teaching techniques, activity-based learning, smart classrooms, educational parks, e-content, option of English medium as well as welfare schemes such as free books, uniforms, mid-day meal, scholarships to eligible beneficiaries. Apart from awareness rallies, nukkad meetings, nukkad nataks, affixing hoardings at public places, e-prospectus, announcements through public address system of religious places, enrolment camps are offering on the spot registration.

Deepika Dean, Headmistress, Government High School, Abdal, has also been carrying out such enrolments camps in her block.

“Prior to organising enrolment camps, announcement through public address system of the village Gurudwara is made to make people aware about it. The move will help people gain first-hand knowledge about our academic programmes and extracurricular activities. There is a chance for us to break the stereotypical attitude about government schools and also make people realise that public education system has much more to offer,” Deepika said.