Bright future

Jorhat, March 9: Dispur has approved establishment of Assam’s first bilingual higher secondary school here with immediate effect by amalgamating five schools.

The schools include the Government Girls’ ME School and four practising Normal Schools here.

The new school will have two mediums of instruction — English and Assamese — and will provide education from kindergarten to higher secondary level.

The proposal for the school, which was okayed by Assam education (elementary) commissioner and secretary L.S. Changsan a few days ago, was mooted by the district Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan a few months ago.

A letter dated March 5, 2012, (no. AEE06/2012/46), received here on Wednesday from the office of the governor and signed by the secretary and commissioner education (elementary) department stated: “The governor of Assam is pleased to amalgamate four normal practising schools of Normal School, Jorhat, and the Government Girls’ ME school, Jorhat, into one model school from ka shreni (kindergarten) up to Class XII. The school will be called Jorhat Model Composite School with following structure:

1. The medium of instruction will be vernacular (Assamese) at the lower primary level and bilingual (Assamese and English) from Classes VI to XII.

2. The school will start functioning with existing infrastructure and teaching staff which can be further developed in due course with facilities such as library, laboratory, gymnasium and auditorium, etc.”

Jorhat deputy commissioner R.C. Jain said this was a precedent that could be followed by clusters of other schools in different parts of the state, so that composite schools up to Class XII could be established. “Nowadays, parents generally prefer to admit their children in a good composite school from pre-school to Class XII, and such a school in the heart of Jorhat town would serve the purpose very well,” he said.

Jorhat Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme officer Parash Goswami, who prepared the proposal at the behest of the deputy commissioner, said this would be Assam’s first government school in which English would be taught from Class VI onwards and possibly the first bilingual school in the private sector.

“The proposal for amalgamation of the five schools, which fall within half-a-kilometre radius of each other, had been suggested by various interested stakeholders as far back as in 1992 but a concrete proposal entailing no additional expenditure for the government had not been prepared,” he said.

“At present the five schools have a total of 33 teachers, 31 of whom are trained, whereas the number of students is 240. On the spot visits, however, showed attendance to be one-third or half in all the schools,” Goswami said.

The Government Girls’ ME School, one of the oldest Assamese medium schools in Assam, was established to educate girls up to the ME level in 1906 whereas the first Normal School established in 1855 in Guwahati was shifted to Jorhat in 1905-06.

The four practising schools were established by educationist and principal of the Normal School here from 1915-1927, Sarat Chandra Goswami, while working on a project titled, “A problem of primary education of rural areas of Assam” aimed at working out solutions for different issues related to education.

Jain, who is in charge of the process as he is the district manager of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, said he would notify the heads of the institutes on Monday about the changes that would be effected to implement Dispur’s directive.