Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, today, announced major reforms to strengthen the primary education system in the state, aligning them with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
Chief Minister, chairing a high-level review meeting on the School & Mass Education Department at Lok Seva Bhawan in Bhubaneswar, emphasised that quality education will be the foundation of a “Prosperous Odisha by 2036.”
A key decision from the review meeting was the merger of the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) and the Council of Higher Secondary Education (CHSE) into a single board, aimed at strengthening the state’s school education system. The government will also regularize all schematic primary school teachers.
Similarly, it was also decided during the high-level meeting that the government will regularise all schematic primary school teachers in the state.
According to the new education policy, more teachers are needed to strengthen primary education. Currently, there are 1,60,319 teacher posts in 45,292 primary schools in the state and another 39,366 posts will be created.
Along with this, 5,067 teacher posts will also be vacant by December 2025. Therefore, the Chief Minister has directed to fill 44,433 posts in the next three years.
About 15,000 posts will be filled every year. Meanwhile, free textbooks are currently provided from Class 1 to Class 8, while only Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe children are provided textbooks in Classes 9 and 10. The CM has decided in the meeting to provide free textbooks to all students from Class 1 to Class 10.
Along with this, the government has decided to steps to develop State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) in the NCERT framework. It has also been decided to strengthen the Director of Textbook Publication and Marketing.
Along with the educational needs of students, it was decided to appoint ANMs for children living in hostels in order to safeguard the health of the students. It has been decided to appoint one ANM or multi-purpose health worker for every 300 children.
To safeguard student health, one ANM or multipurpose health worker will be appointed for every 300 hostel students. All approvals for new private schools will be processed through a fully online system.
Similarly, the meeting decided to make the new private school approval system a completely online process.
Similarly, the Chief Minister suggested to emphasize on teaching tribal children in their mother tongue. The Chief Minister said that this will facilitate linguistic communication with children and improve the quality of education.
Along with this, steps will be taken to establish a multilingual education center in Koraput in collaboration with SCSTRTI.
After that, regular teachers who have done B.Ed will be appointed as resource persons in various clusters for the education of differently-abled children.
The meeting also decided that all future educational reforms will focus equally on learning quality and student well-being.
The review was attended by School and Mass Education Minister Nityananda Gond, Chief Secretary Manoj Ahuja, Principal Secretary to CM Shashwat Mishra, Finance Principal Secretary Sanjeev Mishra, School and Mass Education Secretary Shalini Pandit, OSEPA Director Ananya Das, and other senior officials.
