Assam: 45 high schools upgraded to higher secondary

Guwahati: Altogether 45 high schools have been upgraded to higher secondary schools in Assam, state education minister Ranoj Pegu said on Wednesday.

With thousands of students facing uncertainties regarding admission to colleges to pursue higher education, the Assam government asked the education department to expedite the upgradation of high schools into higher secondary schools to create more seats.

“45 high schools have been upgraded to higher secondary schools,” Pegu said in a tweet.

Of the 45 schools, 5 schools are from Chirang, 5 from Sonitpur, 3 from Golaghat, 3 from Udalguri, 2 from Darrang, 2 from Dibrugarh, 2 from Goalpara, 2 from Dhubri, 2 from Morigaon and 2 schools from Barpeta district, one school each from Biswanath, Cachar, Hailakandi, Kokrajhar, Lakhimpur, Sivasagar and Tinsukia district.

In a notification, the state secondary education department said the high schools have to fulfil certain conditions for the upgradation.

The high school should not have any amalgamation proposal, there should be two additional class rooms, there should be minimum four graduate teachers with post graduate degree, there shall not be any post creation, no financial grant shall be given to the upgraded schools immediately, and the school must give undertaking that they will run higher secondary class with the existing qualified facilities having PG degree, the notification said.

“As many as 3,97,121 students passed HSLC examination this year (93.18% against 64.80% last year). It has led the Secondary Education department to decide to upgrade some of the high schools into higher secondary schools with certain guidelines,” a notification issued by Dr B Kalyan Chakravarthy, principal secretary to education department, stated.

According to the notification, a high school will be considered for upgradation to an HS school if it has requisite infrastructures and PG teachers serving as graduate teachers.

A high school will be upgraded to an HS school if there is an HS school within a radius of 5 kilometres, provided that the HS school has at least 500 students.

The school upgrading will be made in respect of the Arts stream only for now, and thereafter Science and Commerce streams may be taken up in a phased manner. Any pending proposal for the amalgamation of a high school with a higher secondary school must be expedited to give effect from the current academic year (2021-22).

The director of secondary education has been asked to submit a proposal for the creation of necessary posts in the upgraded higher secondary schools.