Bhubaneswar, May 19: The state school and mass education today awarded 44 primary and upper primary elementary schools with "quality award in order to encourage quality education in educational institutes."

The awards were given in three categories - A, B and C. While the three A-category schools were awarded with a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh each, the 16 B-category schools were given away Rs 2 lakh each. Besides, cash award of Rs 1 lakh each was presented to 25 C-category schools.

A total of 68 proposals from 19 districts reached the department. Of these, 44 schools were selected for the award.

The schools were asked to improve the school reinforcement programme called SAHAJ, which was implemented on an experimental basis in 2013 to enhance the capacities of children from Class II to VI. The objective of the intervention was to enable the students to achieve the minimum levels of competency in reading, writing and basic numeracy.

It has been decided that reinforcement on basic literacy and numeracy skills would be provided to all children for three hours every Saturday. Also, schools with five or more teachers will conduct reinforcement classes in third and fourth periods for all slow-learners.

Department secretary Usha Padhee said incentives and awards played a key role in helping schools to improve their outcomes. "Use of self-appraisal methods to evaluate and measure performance of both schools and students, apart from meeting the standards, would go a long way in ushering in a healthy competition among the schools," she said.

The award will encourage self-evaluation and healthy competition among schools to improve and innovate learning and teaching, said Odisha Primary Education Pr gramme Authoritydirector Mahendra Kumar Mallick.