Chandigarh, September 3– The children of poor families, who have been verified under the Parivar Pehchan Patra, will now be imparted education free of cost at the Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary Schools which have been set up with an aim to render quality education to the children.

This decision was taken in a meeting to review the progress of Model Sanskriti Schools held under the Chairmanship of the Chief Minister here today. Education Minister, Sh. Kanwar Pal was also present in the meeting.

To ensure consistent progress of these schools, the Chief Minister directed the senior officers to conduct field visits at these schools and to carry out monthly review of these schools. He further suggested that the senior officers of the districts like SDM, DDPO, Tehsildar should adopt Model Sanskriti Schools and sincere efforts should also be made in this regard.

Sh. Manohar Lal expressed satisfaction over the work done by the Education Department in setting up these Schools. He said there is a demand to increase the number of such schools due to the consistent progress of these schools. Thus, the officials should work towards enhancing the number of schools while considering its viability.

The Chief Minister said that it is mentioned in the National Education Policy 2020 that the schools should lay emphasis on national and local languages, so students should be given the option of taking education in English medium as well as Hindi medium in these Schools. He said that the schools should give prominence to the quality of education and work on enhancing it consistently.

In the meeting, Director, Elementary Education and Special Secretary, School Education Department, Sh. J. Ganesan informed that during the Budget speech of Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal, an announcement was made to open Government Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary School and Government Model Sanskriti Primary School in each block of the state, so as to render quality education to the students on par with private schools. At present, there are 137 Government Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary Schools and 1,418 Model Sanskriti Primary Schools functional in the state. He said that the number of children have increased by 27.90 per cent in Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary Schools and 16.73 per cent in Model Sanskriti Primary Schools.

Sh. J. Ganesan said that a standardized test would be taken to recruit teachers for Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary Schools.

Additional Chief Secretary, School Education Department, Sh. Mahavir Singh, Additional Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Dr. Amit Agrawal and other officers of the Education Department were present in the meeting.