Now, students to get extra marks for planting saplings

Chandigarh, August 3

Haryana School Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar said students, who would plant a sapling in Class IX and nurture it till Class XII, would receive an additional 1–5 marks in their 12th grade. A detailed proposal in this regard would soon be notified, he added.

He said these marks were to be awarded on the basis of the health of the planted sapling. The minister gave this information today after presiding over a meeting of school education officers at Panchkula.

He said the Director, School Education Department, should appoint liasioning officers in each school to coordinate with forest department officers. He said there were around 1.93 lakh students studying across the state in Class IX.

During the meeting, the minister was apprised regarding the few cases of MDM software violation in tablets given to students by the Haryana Government. Gujjar was informed that by breaking this software, a student got access to all websites and contents, which was earlier restricted to education-based websites.

Gujjar directed officers to identify these students and take strict action against them. He instructed officers to withdraw tablets from their possession at the earliest. He further said though the cases of software breaking in tablets are less than .05 per cent to the overall distributed tablets, still a strong message should reach among students in order to avoid any mishandling in future.