Extra 1-5 marks to Haryana school students for planting, nurturing tree: Education Minister Kanwar Pal

CHANDIGARH: Haryana Education Minister Kanwar Pal on Thursday said students of the state government schools who will plant a tree when they are in class 9 and nurture it till class 12 would receive an additional 1–5 marks in their 12th grade. A detailed proposal in this regard will soon be notified, he added. He said these marks are to be awarded on the basis of the health of the planted tree.

According to an official statement, the minister said this practice aims to foster social responsibility among students towards the environment. The minister was presiding over a meeting of school education officers at Shiksha Sadan in Panchkula. He further directed Forest Department officers to ensure the availability of the plants at the schools.

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He said the Director School Education Department should appoint liaisoning officers in each school to coordinate with forest department officers. He informed that there are around 1.93 lakh students studying across the state in class 9. During the meeting, the minister was apprised regarding the few cases of mobile device management software violation in tablets given to students by the Haryana government. Pal was informed that by breaking this software, a student gets access to all websites and contents, which was prior restricted to education-based websites.

He directed officers to identify these students and take stringent action and instructed officers to withdraw tablets from their possession at the earliest. The minister further said that though the cases of software breaking in tablets are less than 0.5 per cent to the overall distributed tablets, still a strong message should reach among students in order to avoid any mishandling in future. He also appealed to the parents to keep a check on their wards while they are using tablet.

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He directed the officers to keep strict vigil on such cases so that these numbers do not increase in future. Pal said "our aim is to bridge the gaps" in digital learning for the majority of students studying in government schools who hail from economically weaker and deprived sections and cannot afford devices like smartphones and tablets. The Haryana government has distributed free tablets to students of classes 10-12 of government schools.