Keeping govt. schools out of assessment, a reason for bad condition of schools: CAG

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the functioning of primary educational institutions, tabled in the ongoing legislature session, has said that keeping schools run by government departments outside the process of renewal and recognition procedures, is a reason for bad condition of such schools.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the functioning of primary educational institutions, tabled in the ongoing legislature session, has said that keeping schools run by government departments outside the process of renewal and recognition procedures, is a reason for bad condition of such schools.

In the report for 2021-22, it has been mentioned that as schools run by government departments are not subjected to mandatory assessment, a systematic audit of the condition of buildings, sufficiency of staff, and availability of teaching aids etc., has not been undertaken at regular intervals.

While the State government stated (in May 2023) that regulatory assessment was not mandatory for government schools, it is yet to evolve a system for periodically verifying the availability of educational facilities, compliance to safety norms etc., for enabling the departments to rectify deficiencies, if any, in a time-bound manner.

The CAG report said that including the government schools in the periodic assessment would facilitate better compliance towards infrastructure and safety norms.

The report also mentioned that the departments had not analysed the grades of schools after 2019-20 and as a result the comparative position of schools in terms of availability of infrastructure couldn’t be ascertained. Consequently non-continuation of the grading of schools after 2019-20 impaired the ability of the departments to identify and communicate the progress in improving the infrastructure facilities in the schools.

Although the government stated that student achievement tracking system (SATS) collected data related to infrastructure, the fact remained that though data was collected, it was not analysed for grading and reporting.

According to the grading done in 2019-20 during which schools were categorised as A,B, C, and D, based on the infrastructure available, out of the 22,341 lower primary schools only 86 (less than 1%) were graded A and out of the 22,083 upper primary schools, 3,017 (13.66%) were graded A.