Mumbai, Jan 23 (PTI) The Maharashtra government is tracking down the locations of all schools across the state to gather the availability data, in a bid to implement the Right to Education Act that makes it mandatory for states to have a school within a kilometre from the child''s house.
"We are tracking schools with Geographic Information System to check availability across the state, as per the RTE," Minister of State for School Education Fauzia Khan told PTI.

Do not limit your child to your own education, for he was born in another time.

A Jewish proverb

In November, the state education department had started a self-evaluation tool for teachers of government schools and now, schools will grade themselves.

Over a four-year period, we at the Azim Premji Foundation produced the largest single library of digital learning resources (DLR) in India for children. Contained in 125 CDs, these were exciting lessons for children from classes I to VIII. Made in 18 languages—including tribal ones— they were designed to be completely integrated in school curriculum.

We worked with various state governments to use these DLRs in thousands of schools. But they did not run well everywhere.

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Karnataka, has accepted the recommendations of child rights’ activists to include children of bridge schools under the Karnataka state draft rules of Right to Education (RTE) Act, said its official of SSA.

A group of child rights’ activists, on Tuesday, had a meeting with Sandhya Venugopal Sharma, Karnataka state project director of SSA, where the issue was raised. According to statistics, Karnataka has about 20 bridge schools.

By S. Giridhar

Three years ago, the collector of Jhajjar district in Haryana invited me to a day long workshop with his education team. The performance of the government schools in his district (as in other districts) was poor and he wanted his team to come up with a strategy. Despite attempts by the moderators to get the group to identify the root causes and then develop an action plan, the unanimous chant of the functionaries was, “We must have more monitoring of the schools.”