ITDA mulls special coaching classes for tribal students

The Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), East Singhbhum, is planning to introduce special coaching classes for tribal students to help them do better in school final examination, a top official has said.
The tribal students were found wanting in subjects like Maths and Science, which ITDA now aims to fix, its director B Maheshwari said.
"After going through the performance of the tribal students during the past few years, it has been observed that they did not do well in Mathematics, Science and English in their matric examination," Maheshwari told PTI.
ITDA is planning to introduce special coaching for these subjects soon, which will go on till the board exam.

"We will outsource good teachers for the task," Maheshwari added.
The focus of the Jharkhand government is to ensure improvement in the performance of tribal students in school final examination, he said.

Referring to the five residential schools run in the district, he said the performance as well as attendance of tribal students in these schools have improved a lot. Earlier, the attendance of students were not satisfactory but it is 100 per cent now owing to the facilities being provided by the government including books, uniform, food etc, Maheshwari claimed.
"In the 2017-18 fiscal, we have already disbursed Rs 11.5 crore scholarship among the 1.10 lakh SC/ST/OBC pre-matric students (Standards 2 to 10)," Maheshwari, who is also the district welfare officer, said.

The scholarship amount is directly transferred into the accounts of the students being operated by the parents, he said adding, the process of disbursing scholarships among 11,000 students of standard 1 was on.
As far as scholarship of post-matric students studying in Jharkhand or outside, he said "we have received 7,600 applications online and the figure is expected to touch 8,000".
After scrutiny of the applications, the payment of scholarships will be credited to their accounts as direct benefit transfer, he said.
ITDA has also disbursed Rs 3,000 each among 14,000 ST/SC/OBC and newly added minority community (standard 8) students to purchase bicycle, he said.

While the first batch of 40 tribal students have already been enrolled in Ashram Vidhyalaya, set up exclusively for ST girl students, in Arjunbeda under extremist-hit Gorabandha block of the district, the construction work for Eklabya Vidyalaya, a Centre-sponsored school, was on over 10 acres of land in Baharagora block, he said.
Eklabya Vidyalaya would accommodate tribal students from standard 6 onwards, he said adding that the district administration is also upgrading the residential middle school in the district.