Date:12/10/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/10/12/stories/2007101261100900.htm

Tamil Nadu

School education website planned

Special Correspondent

Lack of data affecting decision-making process: Thangam Thennarasu

Thangam Thennarasu

CHENNAI: At long last, the School Education Department is catching up with e-governance. The stage is set for the creation of a website for the Department.

The lack of data such as the number of schools and teachers and vacancies and infrastructure available causes difficulties when it comes to taking decisions.

Orientation programme

The constraint was best explained by Minister for School Education Thangam Thennarasu himself, while inaugurating a one-day orientation programme for district officials on e-governance organised by the department here on Thursday.

The Minister said when he asked for data for presenting the budget demands for his department last year, officials gave different figures. A good management information system, similar to those run by corporates, was required for taking proper decisions, he said. When he wanted to know the number of classrooms, he received different figures. And officials came out with incongruent figures when he asked them to specify the number of schools.

Similarly, three different answers came to his query about the number of teachers. For the same post, there were two teachers.

In the absence of a holistic approach, those in foreign countries who wished to help their alma mater were unable to do so. Hence, he ordered the creation of a database which, he said, would ensure transparency and help in tracking dropouts.

When district officials compiled the data properly and the constantly-updated network was linked to the Secretariat through the Directorate of School Education, it would help them and the higher authorities.

School Education Secretary M. Kutralingam said that at least from the next year, it would be possible to fill the vacancies of teachers at the beginning of the year when the computerised data were expected to be available.

Joint Director of School Education G. Arivoli said plans were afoot to create the School Education Department’s web site by Pongal.

As part of e-governance, a school profile and a scale register had been completed. Profiles of teachers and students and infrastructure of schools would have to be done later.