Officials of North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd (NEDFi) and others during the releasing of a report on "Regional Plan and Status of Science Education in Schools in North East Region (NER)" in Guwahati recently.
Dimapur, October 25 (MExN): A report of North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd (NEDFi) released recently has highlighted the need to improve teaching and learning of science and mathematics at the schools in the eight North East states.
The report titled, ‘Regional Plan and Status of Science Education in Schools in North East Region (NER)’, was released at NEDFi House, Guwahati by J.K. Sinha, Joint Secretary, Ministry of DoNER, Government of India, on October 18.
Carried out by NEDFi with support of IIT Guwahati and Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai (HBCSE TIFR), the study looked at the status of science and mathematics education in the NER and suggested a Regional Plan for its improvement, according to a press release.
As part of the study, an assessment test in science and mathematics was administered to 5620 upper primary and secondary students from 119 schools located in 47 districts in all the states of the region.
A benchmark exercise was also undertaken to compare the performance of the NER schools with a sample group of schools from Maharashtra by covering 542 upper primary and secondary students from 10 schools across 6 districts of the state.
The findings of the study were presented at a regional workshop which was attended by all stakeholders including members of RMSA, SSA, SCERT, DERT, Directorate of Secondary Education and Board of Secondary Education from all the 8 states, NEC and Assam State Technology & Environment Council (ASTEC).
The report identified the priorities on which decisions have to be taken by the State Governments for implementation of the proposed Regional Plan. It also suggested steps for improvement of student performance in the upper primary and high school, improved utilisation and maintenance of existing facilities like laboratories, libraries, computers etc. and raising public awareness.
Some of the proposed strategies and activities to achieve these goals are implementation of activity based teaching learning focussed on the development of concepts and real life applications through experiments and visual approaches and IT applications, evaluation of existing textbooks on parameters like availability, simplicity and attractiveness of the layout, exposure visits, ensuring the availability of science and mathematics teachers, regular evaluation of teachers training needs, tie up by state governments with IIT Guwahati/ HBCSE, the release added.
