GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister (CM) Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday, November 17, announced that the Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA) and the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) will be merged from next year. The Directorates of Elementary and Secondary Education will also be merged into one single Directorate of School Education.
CM Sarma made the announcement while reviewing the functioning of the Elementary Education and Secondary Education Departments in the presence of Education Minister Ranoj Pegu, and political secretary to the CM, Jayanta Malla Baruah.
The merging will be done as all higher secondary classes are to be abolished from colleges at the earliest as per the new National Education Policy. As such, all high schools will be converted into Higher Secondary (HS) schools. A total of 1,000 schools will be converted into HS schools in the first phase.
The CM further directed all lower primary schools to be merged with the nearby ME (Middle English) schools to prevent the dropout of students.
The Assam government will be setting up a portal for the identification of post-graduate teachers in middle and elementary schools. The minimum qualification required for future recruitment of teachers for middle and high schools will be post-graduation, the CM announced.
Sarma further directed the verification of certificates of all suspicious PhD teachers.
The Public Works Department (PWD) has been asked to urgently submit an estimated cost for the construction of 1,162 proposed cluster hostels. The process of setting up model schools has been asked to be expedited.