Higher education minister Badri Narayan Patra (centre) along with the department secretary Aparajita Sarangi (left) release the common minimum standard for colleges during launch of performance tracking cell in Bhubaneswar on Monday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 23: The department of higher education today announced a list of measures to streamline and monitor education system in the state.

A performance-tracking cell was launched to maintain a comprehensive database of all colleges, its staff and infrastructure.

“Non availability of a proper database of colleges is a major problem in the department. The cell will maintain a comprehensive database of the staff in position and the college infrastructure position,” said higher education minister B.N. Patra while inaugurating the cell.

The department also released a list of “common minimum standard” for all government, non-government (aided and block grant), junior, degree and autonomous colleges of the state. The common minimum standard includes a list of 25 criteria including minimum student attendance, library facility, record of teachers profile, campus infrastructure update, extra-curricular activities and others.

From September onwards, principal of all colleges will be required to provide the status of their institutes under various heads in the list and submit it to the performance tracking cell online every month.

Monitoring teams will check 20 per cent of these reports every month. The department has formed 10 monitoring teams with 40 officials for the purpose. These officials will tour three districts at one time to check the common minimum standard information.

Similarly, teaching faculties were directed to take at least 25 classes, including remedial and special classes, every week. Teachers have to stay in the college for at least five hours on working days. This apart, they were asked to maintain lesson plans and progress registers.

To manage employees’ grievances, the department of higher education has decided to put in place a grievance redressal cell that will operate from the Textbook Bureau every Saturday.

The grievances will be computerised and a deadline will be marked for the completion of each case. Coloured cards will be used for indicating the importance of the case and there will be monitoring of the cases by the secretary higher education department every fortnight.

The department has over 10,000 court cases against it, 300 of which are contempt cases against the commissioner and secretary of the department.

“The grievance cell will not only help the department redress all the complaints at its own level on urgent basis, but also ensure that there is no logjam of complaints at the department of higher education, directorate of higher education and the regional directorate of higher education,” said secretary of higher education department Aparajita Sarangi.

An employees charter titled Sankalp was also announced according to which, officials of the department, the director of higher education, the regional director of education and principal of all colleges will be required to frame timelines for each type of work.

The department also instructed all colleges to beautify their campuses to make it more pleasant and inviting for students. “The colleges must pump in their development funds for college beautification. Public-private tie-ups must be explored for the purpose,” said Sarangi.