The Education Minister, Punjab, Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema today reviewed the important projects of the department during a high level meeting here. Giving details in a statement, Dr. Cheema said that a sum of Rs. 162 crore has been released for upgrading the Government schools of the state as well as for other construction works of the schools. He said that this financial grant would be instrumental in the strengthening of infrastructure at schools.Dr. Cheema further said that under the development plan chalked out by the department, 44 middle schools would be upgraded to the high school with the aid of the above grant. Besides this, libraries would be constructed in 132 government schools and 2370 new rooms in the schools would also come up. Directing the officers of the department to complete the works on schedule without compromising on quality, Dr. Cheema reiterated the commitment of the Punjab Government to provide modern infrastructure to the government schools of the state.
Divulging more, the minister also reviewed the Punjab State teachers Eligibility Test (T.E.T.) and said that the T.E.T. would be conducted at 330 centers and a total of 1,76,000 candidates would take the test in T.E.T.-1 and T.E.T.-2. He further elaborated that he would soon take stock of the security arrangements in a video conferencing with the SSPs and DCs.Giving more details, Dr. Cheema said that the Education department is conducting evaluation examination this time for the 5th and 8th Classes. He said that all the arrangements have been put in place for this exam to be held under the aegis of State Council for Education Research and Teaching (SCERT) during February-March. He also informed that close co-ordination would be maintained with the Punjab School Education Board and DPI (Secondary Education) to ensure the success of this first time initiative.
Dr. Cheema also said that a review was also conducted of the teachers training programme in the course of the meeting. He informed that the department provided training to about 400 master trainers who in turn trained the teachers in their respective districts. He further added that the 5 day training of the first batch of 3000 teachers has been successfully completed. Elaborating more, he said that the second batch would begin soon and the whole training programme would be videographed. Expressing satisfaction at the teacher training programme, he said that the purpose of this programme is to make teachers aware about the new trends emerging in teaching methodology keeping in view the changing times.On the occasion, Principal secretary Mr. C. Roul, Director General School Education Mr. Pardeep Aggarwal, Chairperson Punjab School Education Board Dr. Tejinder Kaur Dhaliwal, Secretary Punjab School Education Board Er. Mr. G.S. Batth, DPI (Secondary Education) Mr. Balbir Singh Dhol, DPI (Elementary Education) Mr. Harbans Singh Sidhu and Director, SCERT Mr. Sukhdev Singh Kahlon were also present.