The State government on Monday informed the State Legislative Assembly that it will soon fix student fees and salary of pre-primary teachers.
Responding to a question asked by Fatorda MLA Vijai Sardesai in the Legislative Assembly on Monday, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that after implementing the National Education Policy (NEP), the government had asked all the pre-primary school managements to register with the Directorate of Education. As many as 702 have registered, and the department will hold an inspection after which fees and salary for pre-primary teachers will be decided.
Earlier, Sardesai brought to the notice of the House that teachers teaching in pre-primary schools were paid low salaries, even less than MTS staff working in government and aided schools.
Sardesai also informed the House that there were no government school in Konkani in eight talukas and no government-aided schools in three talukas. He wanted to know what steps the government will take to start government schools in Konkani medium.
Stating that there were 23 government primary schools in Konkani medium and 645 government primary schools in Marathi medium, Sawant said that the government will give permission to any institution having required infrastructure. He assured MLAs that the government will start schools in Konkani medium in their respective constituencies provided they take initiative and enrol minimum 25 students.
The Chief Minister also clarified that the NEP Task Force’s recommendation to introduce Devanagari and Roman scripts from Class 3 refers only to teaching the scripts, not Konkani in Roman script.
Aldona MLA Adv Carlos Alvares Ferreira had raised a point of order, citing official records that the Task Force suggested introducing both scripts to promote multilingualism.
The Chief Minister said that Roman script is in English unlike Devanagari script.