Guwahati, April 3: A total of 12,445 government schools across Assam are gearing up for the four-day Gunotsav 2017, a festival organised by the elementary education department, starting tomorrow to improve the standard of education.

The schools will be assessed by legislators and senior government officials.

For Gunotsav, a pilot project to be carried out in eight districts of the state, the government has adopted the Gujarat model where the festival was a huge success in assessing schools.

In Assam, the project will be implemented in Barpeta, Chirang, Dibrugarh, Hailakandi, Kamrup (metro), West Karbi Anglong, Lakhimpur and Morigaon districts. The school-assessment drive will be conducted by nearly 256 external evaluators, including IAS, IPS, IFS and ACS officers besides MLAs.

Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, too, will visit some schools in Kamrup (metro) district.

According to the department of elementary education, a plan will be chalked out after the assessments to improve infrastructure and other facilities in the educational institutions in Assam.

In Gunotsav, scholastic, co-scholastic activities, infrastructure and community participation of a school will be evaluated.

The first evaluation drive in every school tomorrow will be done by the teachers themselves. On the remaining three days, external evaluators will scrutinise the students' activities.

Among the criteria of evaluation, reading, writing and numeric tests of students from classes II to VIII will be conducted under the scholastic activities which include general science, social science and mathematics tests.

In co-scholastic category, knowledge of art, use of library, plantation of saplings, physical education, regularity in attending morning assemblies, personal and social skills besides initiatives for celebration of national and international days will be evaluated.

Availability of toilets, drinking water facilities, number of classrooms, electricity, washing facilities, availability of computers, digital connectivity, midday meals, boundary wall construction and disaster management preparedness in a school will be considered under the infrastructure category.

In the evaluation drive, participation of school management committees in various activities such as social audit, arranging summer camps and community activities will be evaluated.

There will be students' parliament and Saturday clubs in the schools. Hygiene status and utilisation of grants will be scrutinised under the community participation category.