Govt Schools Improve Results

Reforms in DELHI - IV

They're certainly not a Delhi Public School, or a Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, but the quality of the Delhi-government-run schools has improved considerably over the past few years.

Pass percentages for Class X have gone up from 39 per cent in 1997-98 to 62 per cent in 2001-02, and for Class XII, the improvement is from 75 per cent to 83 per cent.

While no tracking is done right now of how many of the one million students in these schools get first divisions (that's really where the private schools score), the education department has just started (on January 15) its website, to begin tracking the progress of each of its 998 schools.

 

For now, Rajendra Kumar, director in charge of education, has sent circular to each principal threatening disciplinary action if their results decline by more than 10 per cent in the coming board examinations, and a commendation should the reverse happen.

Kumar says there is no real method to ensure there's no absenteeism of the 40,000 teachers employed, apart from surprise inspections that rose from 50 earlier to 200 per month this year (500 absent teachers were given a day's pay-cut). He, however, adds that tracking the school