Bhubaneswar, Aug. 30: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has given its nod to schools to set up permanent shops on campus for sale of NCERT books.

The decision has come as a major relief for parents and schools who feel that the presence of such shops would ensure that the children wouldn't have to look here and there to buy books. Stationery and other material required by students will also be sold in these shops.

"We had to run around to gather various requirements of the students. These shops will bring everything under one roof," said Somali Mohanty, who teaches at a DAV school in the city.

School merger

The state government has decided to merge upper primary schools with high schools to ensure better management of the educational institutions.

As many as 1,603 upper primary schools will be merged with the high schools either on one campus or adjacent to each other with effect from September 1.

The decision was taken as many of these upper primary schools were facing problems of low enrolment.Following the merger, the institutes will be named as Nodal High School. Balasore district has the highest number of upper primary schools at 145, whereas the tribal-dominated Malkangiri district has only one upper primary school. Cuttack has 135 upper primary schools, Jajpur 120 and Mayurbhanj 135.

"There are many upper primary and high schools in the state having very poor enrolment of students. But, they have full strength of teachers. While in some other cases, these schools situated on a single campus have students but suffer from inadequate teaching staff. Merger of such schools would improve the teaching facility and the schools would have a good strength of both students and teachers," said a senior official of the school and mass education department.

Educationist Shibani Routray said: "This is a good step as it will ensure streamlining of the school education system. Also, it will be easy for the authorities to regulate the schools in the rural areas."

Tax collector

The Cuttack municipal corporation placed a tax collector under suspension on Wednesday for alleged misappropriation of funds. Municipal commissioner Bikash Mohapatra said: "Preliminary findings indicate misappropriation of Rs 58,000 but the amount is likely to go up to more than Rs 1 lakh."