The education department will conduct weekly meetings of principals from August 7 to raise the academic standard of the colleges in Bihar, .

Sitaram Singh, director, higher education, said: “The idea behind holding the meetings is to provide quality education to students. We will also discuss the steps being taken by the respective colleges in getting the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (Naac) seal.”

The meeting would be conducted university-wise and the principals of respective colleges would be called on specified dates. The meeting will be held on every Tuesday of the month.

In Bihar, there are about 260 constituent colleges under nine state universities.

In the meeting, education department officials will brief the principals about the steps to improve the standard of education in each college.

Apart from focusing on quality education, issues pertaining to a college’s financial status and ways to improve infrastructure will also be discussed.

College principals of respective universities will be called for the meeting at Madan Mohan Jha Hall at the department’s office.

Haridwar Singh, the principal of AN College, said: “In the meeting, issues pertaining to court cases of teachers, non-teaching employees, financial matters and issues pertaining to steps being taken by the college to improve the quality of education will be discussed.”

Sources said universities in Bihar are loaded with court cases related to promotion of teachers, non-teaching employees, and other such issues. With time, the number of such cases has been pilling up.

Steps to bring down the number of court cases will also be discussed in the meetings.

The AN College principal added that utilisation of funds meant for infrastructure will also be discussed.

The principals will be asked about the guidelines to be followed for getting the Naac seal.

Patna Science College principal Arun Kumar Sinha said: “The meetings will be fruitful because the principals will be able to put forward their problems before the education department directly.”

Sources said apart from such issues, matters related to increasing the enrol- ment rate of students in higher education would be put forward.

At present, the enrolment rate in higher education is up to 12.4 per cent and it has to be increased to at least 20 per cent for improving the quality of higher education to attract talented students.

Recently, the education department convened a meeting of principals of all 47 constituent colleges and two government colleges where the department asked the principals to strictly follow the guidelines for the Naac seal.