State to disburse 5.4 lakh laptops, fill teacher vacancies soon: Palaniswami

He also disbursed Dr S Radhakrishnan Awards to teachers from across the State as part of the Teachers Day celebrations at Kalaivanar Arangam. He wanted all ‘Nallasiriyar’ teachers to evolve as ‘dream teachers’ by employing poetic touch in connecting with students. 

The ongoing educational reforms would secure Tamil Nadu a distinction among other States, and the state would stand out, with the proposed syllabus revision. 

He went on to explain about the reforms - abolition of ranking in public exams, and pre-release of examination schedule for higher secondary education at the start of the year, among other things. “Welfare measures had improved the admission rate in elementary education to 99.85 per cent, and in middle-school to 99.2 per cent,” he said. 

Reeling out statistics on milestones in school education department, Palaniswami said, “Around 40,433 posts of teachers were filled by Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) and 15,169 part-time teachers were appointed under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) since 2011. 

As many as 227 elementary schools were opened, 116 were upgraded to middle schools, 829 middle schools were upgraded to high schools, and 402 high schools were upgraded as higher secondary schools.”

Palaniswami said the current academic year’s budget allocation was 26,932 crore while allocation made by the regime between 2011 and this year accounted for Rs 37,261 crore. 

Deputy CM O Panneerselvam claimed that the State was spending onefourth of its total revenue for school education and higher education during the late CM J Jayalalithaa’s regime. 

School education minister KA Sengottaiyan said, that Anitha could not clear NEET because questions were from Class XI as well. This would change from this year. 

“Implementation of public exam for Class XI has helped students to tackle entrance examinations for medicine and engineering with ease,” he observed. 

The minister reiterated the measures which are in place to help students. “The development of a question bank with graphic explanations, and offering of special training sessions for students to face the competitive examinations with eminent trainers, besides total migration to smart classrooms for Classes between IX and XII, to crack any entrance exam, including NEET, will definitely be of great help to students,” Sengottaiyan claimed.