A new student receives flowers and chocolates from teachers at Governor House Primary School in Bhubaneswar on Friday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, April 15: Chocolates, roses, badges and tilak. Going to school had never before been so special. In an innovative move to welcome newcomers, a Pravesh Utsav or welcome ceremony was launched today in nearly 52,000 government and government-aided schools across the state.

Decorated with mango leaves, balloons, rangoli and banana trunks, schools wore a festive look. Banners displayed at the entrance of the schools or school gates read “Pravesh Utsav”. On the first day, about 1.42 lakh students got admitted to Class I in schools all over the state.

Today, the new entrants wore smiled as teachers and principals greeted them by putting a tilak on their foreheads. Each of them were also given chocolates, roses and badges.

“The teachers and principal seemed very friendly. I love my new school,” said six-year-old Prabhat Sahoo. “It will be a memorable day for the newcomers. They were all glowing with happiness. The Pravesh Utsav will definitely boost a child’s self-confidence and minimise school phobia. We have received the chocolates, flowers and textbooks but not the school bags yet,” said Bandana Mohapatra, principal of Capital Boys’ High School.

The ceremony is part of Siksha Chetna Abhiyan, a weeklong community mobilisation and awareness generation campaign which is an initiative of the Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA), school and mass education department. The three other partners in the initiative are rural development development, SC/ST development department and the state unit of United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).

The campaign, which would continue till April 21 with a string of events taking place everyday, aims to attract more students to schools and helping newcomers adjust to the new atmosphere. The schools have been provided with designed school kits containing aiding materials, posters, and instructions guidelines for the campaign activities for each day.

Students, teachers of some schools, local youth and members of NGOs rallied across the capital with placards, boards with hand-written captions on education and chanted slogans to spread awareness regarding the campaign. In the rural areas, the sarpanch, panchayat raj members, NGO representatives, parents would be invited for the events in the consecutive days.

As many as 1.87 lakh children aged between 6 and 14 years of age in the state continue to be out of school. These include 30,000 children from scheduled caste and 90,000 from the scheduled tribe communities.

The campaign makes an attempt to address those reasons through promotion of local interventions like parents’ counselling, awareness rallies, public meetings, parents-teachers’ association meetings, and meetings of newly formed School Management Committees, among others.

Posters on Right to Education Act, functions of School Management Committees, and water and sanitation were used to conduct the public meetings and create awareness. The school and mass education department has assigned senior officers to observe the activities in schools across the state and send in reports.