Sivankutty to meet Union Education Minister in New Delhi

Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty will meet Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in New Delhi on May 2 to present the State’s demands in the area of education.

At a press conference here on Tuesday, the Minister said he would convey directly to Mr. Pradhan the State’s objection to denial of funds under the Samagra Shiksha scheme in the name of failure to sign the agreement for implementing the PM-SHRI scheme.

General Education Principal Secretary Rani George, Director of General Education Shanavas S., State Council of Educational Research and Training Jayaprakash R.K., and Samagra Shiksha Kerala Project Director Supriya A.R. will accompany him.

The Minister will also attend a meeting of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) general council meeting where he will raise the issue of changes made to textbooks by the NCERT in the name of their revision. The Minister had earlier alleged that this was a bid to saffronise education in the country.

Training for teachers during the vacations will be held for five days from May 13 at various centres. Besides introducing them to new textbooks, training will be given to them as part of the anti-drug campaign of the government. Cluster meetings to be held later in the year will also feature training in anti-drug campaign.

A mega Zumba display involving 1,500 students from select schools in Thiruvananthapuram district, teachers, and parents will be held at Chandrasekharan Nair Stadium at 5 p.m. on Wednesday as part of the government efforts to include sports and arts education in the school curriculum with the wider aim of steering students away from drugs and violence. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the event.

Nearly 2,000 teachers had applied for the higher secondary general transfer within two days, Mr. Sivankutty said. The government had decided to form a committee comprising the General Education additional secretary, higher secondary senior administrative officer, and Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education chief executive officer to address teachers’ complaints related to the transfer.

Periods allotted for physical and art education in students’ timetable will be used only for those activities from the new academic year, the Minister said.

The Minister clarified that the results of the Lower and Upper Secondary Scholarship (LSS/USS) examinations had not been published contrary to the claims made by an Uttar Pradesh-based fraudulent organisation. A complaint had been given to the police in connection with the fake news that the LSS/USS results had been published on April 27. The results were being processed and would be published soon, he said.