UT embarks on mission 100% literacy

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the UT Administration has launched an innovative educational project — Mission-100. It is aimed at improving performance and accountability in the government schools and achieving a 100% literacy rate in the city by the end of the current academic session.

The initiative was launched on the lines of Punjab Governor-cum-Chandigarh Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria’s vision to raise the standard of the government schools and ensure that each and every resident in the joint capital city of Punjab and Haryana becomes literate.

At present, the overall literacy rate in Chandigarh is around 94%, which is much higher than the national average. The literacy rate among men and women is around 96% and 91%, respectively, which is based on the population aged 7 and above.

The brainchild of UT Education Secretary Prerna Puri, the main objective of the Mission-100 is to achieve 100% performance in various academic and administrative targets at 111 government schools in Chandigarh.

The UT Director School Education (DSE), Harsuhinder Pal Brar, told The Tribune on Sunday that the mission would ensure 100% student attendance, ?enrolment of eligible students, ??teacher accountability and training, ?coverage in continuous comprehensive evaluation (CCE) and ?100% literacy in UT through teaching the identified adult illiterates. Also, efforts would be made to achieve 100% pass percentage in board exams. These steps would be taken under the mission so that by the end of the current academic year 2025-26, Chandigarh can be declared 100% literate, he added.

Brar said the key focus areas of the initiatives will be academic performance, monitoring and evaluation, teacher involvement and parental engagement.

“Improving the pass percentage in the Board classes (X and XII) to 100%, providing remedial support to underperforming students and ensuring timely syllabus completion as well as regular assessments will be complied with to enhance academic performance,” he said.

Under the monitoring and evaluation programme, the Education Department would ensure regular tracking of almost 1.5-lakh students’ academic progress. It includes monthly reviews and school performance analysis using the national digital platform VSK (Vidya Samiksha Kendra), which is aimed at enhancing school education quality through real-time monitoring and data analysis. Earlier, 8,000 adult learners were identified in the house-to-house survey conducted by the teachers in December 2024.

To enhance teacher involvement, the Mission-100 would encourage them to take ownership of student performance and organise training programmes and workshops.

On the parental-engagement front, the initiative would strengthen school management committees (SMCs), and improve communication between parents and around 4,700 teachers regarding children’s performance.

The DSE said the Mission-100 would be implemented in all government schools on the first day of the session after the summer break.

“The initiative is focused on data-driven governance, school accountability and performance-based mission, which is a bold and focused initiative to ensure 100% academic success as well as accountability in the government schools,” he revealed.

The programme would also ensure comprehensive and special teaching and learning material for the Board classes.

The Education Secretary has directed the department to constitute by Monday the subject committees under a principal, who has specialisation in that subject. These committees would prepare subject-related special teaching and learning material for the Board classes of X and XII.

“This teaching and learning material will act as a comprehensive base document to be given to each Board class student so that they update it with class notes throughout the year,” said Puri.

She said this base document for each subject was expected to be ready before the end of the summer vacations. “This will be institutionalised so that each year at the start of the academic session, the updated subject material is handed over to the children of the Board classes on the first day of their new class,” she added.

RESULTS UNDER REVIEW

The UT Education Secretary has issued directions to prepare a comprehensive review document (on subject, region and school) containing the output data of boys, girls and teachers on the basis of the CBSE Class X and XII annual results declared recently.

“We intend to do it in the next few weeks. We have already held the parent-teacher meeting to review the compartment candidates and the way forward to ensure that they meet the grade in the retest on Saturday,” added Brar.