Govt sticks to five and a half hours policy
TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The Goa government will maintain five and a half hours schooling for 2014-15 academic year and will go by its present calendar of not less than 237 working days and not less than 200 instructional days, starting from June 4, 2014.
A circular was issued by the directorate of education a couple of weeks ago stating that school instructional hours shall not be less than five hours and 30 minutes per day (excluding recess) and accordingly the timing of the schools is to be adjusted without altering the total number of periods.
The circular also maintains the stand taken by the government in June 2013 of 237 total number of working days for primary, secondary and higher secondary schools and total number of instructional days of not less than 200 days during the academic year 2014-15.
The school term exams will have to be held only after completion of 200 instructional days.
The circular is yet to reach many schools who are presently in the thick of preparations for Goa Board exams.
The government had granted concession to the plans for extended school timings (of 30 minutes) for the academic year 2013-14. This time however no exemptions have been granted.
A section of the teaching community who are in the know of this latest circular already appear agitated alleging that neither the government, nor the education department has taken the parents and teachers into confidence while proposing to continue with the half hour extended school timings for the academic year June 2014.
The teaching community is also aghast that out of the eight discretionary holidays, heads of schools can declare only three, instead of the earlier four, discretionary holidays adjoining to public holidays for Ganesh Chaturthi while the remaining five days are to be decided in consultation with the PTAs and village education committees.
The government has also released the academic schedule for 2014-15 with the first term set to begin from June 4 to October 18, while the second term would begin from November 7, 2014 to April 30, 2015.
Likewise Diwali vacations would begin from October 30 to November 6, Christmas vacations from December 23, 2014 to January 1, 2015 and summer vacations from May 1, 2015 to June 3, 2015.
The first summative terminal exams will have to be held after October 11, 2014 and second summative terminal exams after April 8, 2015. The final annual exams results would be declared not before April 29, 2015.
According to education department officials, a couple of schools had applied for relaxations in implementation of the extended school timing by half hour for the current academic year. While many were primary section schools, secondary schools had also applied for relaxations.
This time however it is not clear on whether the government would consider granting any relaxations and department officials have refused to comment on the issue.
