Himachal Pradesh government starts 'My School-My Pride' campaign for community engagement in education

NEW DELHI: The Himachal Pradesh government has started the "My School-My Pride" campaign, encouraging individuals and organisations to adopt a school of their choice to provide career counselling and guidance, holding extra or special classes for remedial teaching, yoga training and donating money to the school, officials said on Sunday. The campaign was started under the "Apna Vidyalay" programme.

Under the programme, 'Giving back to society' initiative retired teachers or other employees, professionals, housewives or any other member of the society will be encouraged to come forward and become a member of the academic support team to teach the students without taking any payment or honorarium, a spokesperson of the government said in a statement.

With an objective to create a synergistic partnership between public representatives, administrative leaders, and skilled professionals to contribute collectively for the improvement of government schools, 'Apna Vidyalaya': The Himachal School Adoption Programme (HSAP) has been initiated by the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led state government, he added. Under the "My School-My Pride" campaign, these "adopters" will support the school in case there is shortage of teachers or when the teacher is on leave.

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There will be a monitoring system for the same. Apart from this, dignitaries including MPs, MLAs and officers will be requested to adopt at least one government school of their choice anywhere in the state and to become the School Patron and suggest ways of improvement. Similarly, all the officers in the education department shall adopt one school and act as mentors, the statement said.

The Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) will develop a portal dedicated to the "Apna Vidyalaya" programme which will be available in public domain to ensure accountability as well as enable online and real-time measurement, monitoring and corrective actions.

During its tenure, the BJP government had also launched a scheme "Akhand Shiksha Jyoti - mere school se nikle moti" wherein the pass outs from government schools, who had achieved something in life, would come back to schools to inspire the students and help the school in whatever way they could. PTI BPL MNK -- MNK MNK