Work to implement RTE Act starts

For the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, the state government is using global navigation satellite system to identify primary schools.

The work of identifying the schools has already started. Block Education Officers (BEOs) have been given smart phones, through which they will take photographs of the school and upload them to the department server through Global Position System (GPS).

The Act—to be implemented from the next academic year—says that for children of classes six to eight, a school should be within a distance of three km from their neighbourhood.

An official from the education department said they had to trace the schools, their boundaries and their distance from nearby schools in the area.

Once the task is complete, the higher officials will have the comprehensive data about all the primary schools in the state at the click of the mouse.

The government is trying to finish the whole exercise in 100 days. For this, the BEOs have been asked to visit at least five schools every day. The official said currently the BEOs were covering two schools a day but the efficiency would improve in the coming days.

The official said currently the education department did not know about the condition of the schools’ building. He said mapping through GPS would provide this information. He added that they would even be able to find out if a school’s land has been encroached. Mapping schools through GPS is a joint project of the state and central governments.

The state’s department of public instructions is executing the project. Officials said before the Act gets implemented, they had to gather all the information such as infrastructure of the school, construction works happening there and whether or not a new school is required in an area.