The Ahmedabad Municipal School Board kick started its Gunotsav on Monday to evaluate the students' competency in three basic skills — reading, writing and calculation.
The exercise is being held amid allegations that teachers were asked to skip few days of their Diwali vacation to prepare the students for the evaluation. If that wasn't enough the school board has had just 42 days of classroom teaching from a total of 129 days in the first term.
Apart from the various public holidays, lack of proper planning on the part of the Ahmedabad municipal school board authorities is to be blamed for the reduced number of teaching days. This has affected the teaching at various municipal schools.
"The BJP's lack of administrative skill has resulted in the poor show of the students and this is why teachers were asked to cut their Diwali vacation and prepare the students for the Gunostav Mahostav," said Habibur Mew, member of Ahmedabad Municipal School Board.
He said that the number of students in AMC schools has been falling at the rate of around 2,000 per year but the Ahmedabad Municipal School Board is yet to take any notice or learn its lesson. Criticising the Gunotsav, Mew said that the municipal school board has various regional languages like Urdu, Tamil and Marathi as medium of instruction in its various schools. "If the officers evaluating the students don't know the language in which the students are being instructed, he will have to depend on teachers of that particular medium for interpretation. In this case, true evaluation of the student will not be possible," he said.
However, the chairman of Ahmedabad Municipal School Board Manu Raval, denied allegations that the teachers were asked to cut short their Diwali vacation.
"The teachers' performance is also being evaluated and graded. So some teachers decided to teach weak students on their own," said Raval. He also said that the school board has not given any directive to the teachers.
Raval also said that training, exams and co-curricular activities are part of teaching and such activities cannot be seen as wastage of time. "The training plays crucial role improving the teaching-learning process," he said.
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