PATNA: Children studying in government-run schools in Bihar will now have to carry school bags only five days in a week, as the state government introduced "Bagless Safe Saturday" scheme in its schools on Friday on "Shiksha Diwas", which is observed since 2007 on the birth anniversary of country’s first education minister Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
CM Nitish Kumar formally launched the ‘Bagless Safe Saturday’ scheme during the Shiksha Diwas event held at SK Memorial Hall in Patna. He also unveiled a book of guidelines on the ‘Bagless Safe Saturday’ scheme on the occasion.
“The ‘Bagless Safe Saturday’ scheme will come into effect from tomorrow (November 12) itself. On every Saturday, students will come to schools without bags. They do not need to carry books. The day will be devoted to practical, experiential learning, sports, singing, dancing and other cultural activities," state’s education minister Dr Chandra Shekhar told TOI while briefing about the new initiative.
Speaking on the occasion, Nitish asked the education officials to ‘dismiss from job’ all those teachers who do not take essential interest in teaching the students properly. He also ordered for increasing the salary of those teachers who take classes on a regular basis and properly teach the students. “When you increase the salary of good teachers, they will take more interest in imparting better education among the students,” the CM said. Nitish also said that his government spends a major portion of its annual budget on education.
While remembering his early days as a student of Patna-based erstwhile Bihar College of Engineering (now, NIT-Patna), Nitish said, “When we used to study in engineering college, there was no girl in our class.... Whenever any woman comes to our college campus, students used to gather in large numbers to see her. This was the situation at that time. Now see how many girls are studying in schools and even in the engineering and medical colleges.” The CM said he was delighted to see the presence of so many girls in the audience.
The CM also launched a ‘Best Plus App’ which will be used by education officials for real-time monitoring and tracking of activities and presence of teachers in over 80,000 primary and upper primary schools across the state.
The CM also transferred the amount of incentives in the bank account of students through DBT under different schemes of the education department for FY 2022-23.
State’s finance minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary, education minister Dr Chandra Shekhar and the additional chief secretary (education) Deepak Kumar Singh also addressed the event.
