Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has instructed the education department officials to ensure internet connectivity in all schools during the review meeting at his Tadepalli camp office on Friday.
The chief minister has also asked the officials to ensure two junior colleges in each Mandal, one women’s college, and the other a co-education. He also asked the officials to present the status report of the junior colleges in the next meeting.
The officials explained to the Chief Minister on the department’s preparedness to distribute tabs to the 8th class students like the previous year and said, over 7000 tabs given to students which were damaged due to various reasons have been replaced.
“We have installed doubt clearance apps in the tabs and the distribution of tabs to teachers has brought reliable changes in teaching. They (teachers) who received tabs last year used an average of 77 minutes per day, while the students spent an average of 67 minutes learning the curriculum. Further, the second phase of IFP panels will be set up by the end of December,” said the officials.
The officials also told him that the government has spent over Rs 3,746.82 crores in the second phase of the Nadu-Nedu works in the schools by providing 11 types of facilities and in junior colleges.
The officials informed the chief minister that the number of students writing exams in English medium increased significantly. “It is to be noted that only 37.03 percent of the country are writing exams in English medium while 84.11 percent are writing exams in Andhra Pradesh. In terms of TOEFL training, one class per day is being conducted under the orders of the Chief Minister,” said the officials.
The officials explained the steps taken to implement the IB curriculum in the state and said, “Senior officials have already attended the working group meetings. As part of phase 1, the study will be done on curriculum, assessment, teacher training, teaching plan etc. Further, a training program for teachers will be conducted as part of the second phase. The IB curriculum will start from the next academic year for the first standard, and gradually every year the IB will be expanded by one class.”
Regarding the training of future skills, the officials said, “One period on future skills for every 6th class from next academic year onwards. We will use the services of experts in engineering colleges that will give training to children in future skills. The government will pay the stipend to them.”
They also informed the process of introducing foreign language courses like Spanish, German, Japanese, and Arabic to the school students from class 9 as an additional option and talked with various entities like English and Foreign Languages University, Duolingo, and others. “This will give more opportunities to children,” said the officials.
