Our Correspondent
Kohima | July 12
With the enactment of communitization of Public Institutions and Service Act 2002 on April 15, 2002, the department of School Education initially communitized 205 elementary schools covering 90 villages in 2002 as a pilot project. In the second phase, 197 schools covering 128 villages were communitized in 2003. Buoyed by the active response of the community to the communitization programme, the Nagaland government communitized all the elementary schools in both rural and urban areas from February 4, 2004.
According to the annual administrative report of the department, there are now 1778 communitized elementary schools covering both rural and urban areas under the management and supervision of 1118 VECs and 160 WECs/TECs. Under the initiatives of the VEC/WEC, the report said, the community has been taking an important part in academic and developmental works by sponsoring additional private teachers to solve the problem of shortage of teachers. Some VECs/WECs have set up free coaching and remedial classes to help ‘weak’ students.
Initiatives have been taken by the VEC/WEC in imparting vocational training to school children in crafts using locally available materials such as wood, cane and bamboo. The VEC/WECs are also taking initiatives in imparting supplementary and informal education to school children by engaging them in folk lore, folk songs and dances and customary law practices.
To impact active participation of the community in the implementation of communitization, MDM and SSA programmes, the department has formulated an action plan for community mobilization.
As part of the first step towards implementation of the action plan on community mobilization programme, the department imparted resource persons’ training on communitization of elementary education. It invited 170 departmental officers including district nodal officers, DEOs, DISs, SISs and Accountants of DEO and DIS establishments from April 15 to 18. This was followed by sensitization training on communitization at 41 EBRCs inviting 6 members from each of the 1278 VEC/WEC set up during May and June 2008.
Assessment records collected from 11 districts has indicated that out of 7686 invitees that attended the training, 6164 VEC/WEC members attended the sensitization programme. The percentage of the sensitization during 2008 was 83 per cent. The resolutions from the sensitization trainings of 2008 circulated to all the VEC/WEC has been implemented successfully under the supervision of district nodal officers and field officers in all the districts, the report said.
To make the WEC/VEC members well versed in the Communitization Act and Rules, the department has translated the “Handbook on Communitization of Elementary Education” into 17 tribal language and has dispatched the handbooks to all the 1278 VEC/WEC set-ups in the entire state, the report added.
