TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: While the new menu for midday meals is yet to be dished out by the education department, the government has decided to entrust the monitoring and evaluation of the scheme to the Goa Education Development Corporation (GEDC).
Department sources said that the revamped menu may be served by December and contracts with the new Self Help Groups ~ identified and short-listed by the education department ~ will be signed within the next couple of weeks.
Sources say that the government is likely to finalize the new menu by next week after Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar who is the education minister convenes a meeting with the departments concerned.
Director of Education Anil Powar said, “The midday meal scheme allocates funds for monitoring and evaluation of the scheme which will be directed to the GEDC,” adding that this Corporation would assist the education department in effective implementation of the scheme.
Herald understands that the Corporation would have the mammoth task of monitoring the scheme right from the cooking of the meals in the kitchens to the distribution of the meals to the students. Powar said that the government also wants to extend the scheme to the higher classes such as classes IX and X and all the monitoring aspects would be dealt by the GEDC.
Later Friday, Chairman of the GEDC Sripad Patnekar addressing a function at Porvorim said that the GEDC was all set to take on this new assignment to ensure effective and safe implementation of the midday meal scheme.
Meanwhile, schools and educational institutions appear to have doubts over the MDMS even as it is being revamped. During zone-wise interactions with schools, the education department has assured to look into various concerns raised by PTAs and heads of institutions and said that many have expressed willingness to co-operate in the implementation of the scheme along with the self help groups.
Meanwhile, the government is considering a proposal for training of government primary teachers in language skills for imparting education in English, Konkani and Marathi.
While the first batch of 58 newly recruited government primary teachers have completed a special 12 day workshop under 25 resource persons during Diwali vacations, education director Anil Powar said, “We will evaluate the outcome of this workshop after which we may consider conducting similar training programs for other government primary teachers.”
The training program which imparted skills through drama, art, play methods, was conducted through the initiatives of the Goa Education Development Corporation and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
The new teachers were instructed to focus not only on textbook based teaching but on ‘out of the box methods’ to make language learning more joyful experience and that their progress would be monitored. The GEDC and SSA conducted the valedictory session Friday, where officials of the SSA, GEDC, education department attended.
