Assam government to assess students in state-wide drive

GUWAHATI: The Assam government will carry out 'Gunotsav 2023', a state-wide exercise to evaluate the performance of nearly 43 lakh students studying in over 44,500 schools, from January 18 to February 18, Education Minister Ranoj Pegu said on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference here, Pegu said the exercise will help the Education Department in ensuring quality education with improved learning outcomes. "Gunotsav 2023 will identify the learning gaps of each child and ensure quality education with grade-specific outcomes. It will also assess the performance of schools in areas such as scholastic, co-scholastic, availability and utilisation of infrastructure and community participation," he added.

The exercise will see the participation of all stakeholders starting from teachers, students, administrators and local communities, and will enhance accountability among them for quality education, the minister said.

This year's exercise will be carried out in three phases with 11 districts included in the first phase from January 18 to 21, 12 districts from February 1 to 4 and the remaining eight districts in the last leg from February 15 to 18. "A total of 44,525 schools will be covered in the three phases and 42,76,881 students from Classes 1 to 11 will be evaluated during the state-wide exercise.

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A total of 18,097 external evaluators will be deployed across the state," Pegu said. He said Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma along with other ministers, MPs, MLAs, chief secretary, DGP and senior officials will take part in the mega event to encourage the students as well as teachers, and the community as a whole.

"The massive month-long programme will create cognisance among the students as well as teachers, parents and other stakeholders to further improve the quality of education through a unified effort by all," Pegu said. 'Gunotsav' was first organised in 2017 and already three rounds of this exercise have been conducted since then covering all the districts of Assam.