Sibal

New Delhi, June 29: Their gimlet gaze has made students tremble for generations, but it may now be the headmaster’s turn to come under the hawk-eye from the sky.

Rural schools could be scanned from a satellite to track their performance if Kapil Sibal can implement a plan that marries his previous portfolio, science and technology, to his new job in charge of education.

The human resource development minister has proposed using geo-spatial mapping to find out, for instance, if teachers are skipping classes, The Telegraph has learnt. The technique is strong enough to pick out people in a school’s courtyard, though not inside the classrooms.

A school will be zoomed into and activity there recorded for a fixed period of time — a week at a stretch, for instance.

Study of the footage could then help government officials analyse whether midday meals were being cooked and served on time, whether teachers were reporting on time and whether student attendance was as good as the school claimed.

At Sibal’s invitation, a team of science and technology ministry officials, including secretary T. Ramasami, has held a presentation on the plan for senior HRD ministry bureaucrats, government sources said.