Ranchi's new district education officer (DEO) Rajkumar Prasad Singh is planning to start special inspections at all government and government-recognised schools from this week to assess the ground realities before sanctioning grants in the wake of detection of anomalies in functioning of at least two cradles during recent checks.
Speaking to The Telegraph about his plans, Singh, who got posted in the district a few days ago, said they would initially start with the 150 government-recognised schools in Ranchi before moving on to government schools.
While government schools are completely dependent on the administration for financial support, their government-aided counterparts receive a lump sum under recurring and non-recurring heads from where salary of staff is disbursed and other managerial requirements taken care of.
"Soon, I am going to chalk out an elaborate plan after holding meetings with block and district education officials to start physical inspections at every school in a week's time. Such visits have become necessary as irregularities have been detected in functioning of some schools, especially the government-recognised ones," he said.
Last Friday, Singh visited government-aided Kisan High School at Pithoria, Kanke block, only to find it to closed at 1.30pm. The school is supposed to hold classes from 10am to 4pm. It is not clear whether this school has a biometric attendance system or not with the government pushing hard for the project to prevent truancy, but the education department wasn't aware about any closure plan.
"When contacted, the principal said they called off classes at 12.30pm instead of the usual time of 4pm because of rain," Singh said, adding that none had bothered to inform the department though.
"Who knows the school might have been shut in the past too with the education officials knowing nothing about it," he said.
But what was more shocking for the DEO was the discovery that a majority of staff of Kisan High School have crossed the retirement age, but are still taking classes and drawing salaries while the government has no idea about it.
In the last fiscal, this school had got over Rs 4 lakh from the state as grant.
"The school has 11 staff, including teaching and non-teaching, and four to five of them crossed 60 years long back. But they are still getting salary from government grants. None could answer how?" said Singh, adding that they were brainstorming on ways to recover the money and take action against the erring staff.
Anomalies in enrolment of students also came to light during a recent visit to Utkramit Uchcha Vidyalaya in Namkum.
The DEO maintained that outsiders were found to have appeared for exams through the school while the names of bona fide students weren't on record.
"We have sought enrolment details of the school since 2011 after which a thorough probe will be ordered," he said.
According to Singh, despite policy interventions and myriad plans at the top level, lack of monitoring at the ground was resulting in malpractices in the education system, not ruling out connivance of officials in the government.
"Such anomalies can't take place without the involvement and knowledge of responsible government officials. For example, in the case of the Pithoria school, the management should have kept the education department abreast of all the developments. Or had there been proper inspections before grant of funds, the school authorities would not have dared to flout norms," he said.
