Haryana develops PRaYAAS for improvement in education institutes

Haryana Government has developed performance rating yardstick for academic audit standards (PRaYAAS), a framework for quality improvement in higher education institutes in the state.

The PRaYAAS will also facilitate strict and continuous monitoring of the performance of higher education institutes in Haryana and improve the overall quality and enable them towards the path of excellence, said a spokesman of Higher Education Department.

He said that PRaYAAS would be administered on an annual basis in the state and would be applicable to all government, government aided and self financing colleges of the state. The key objectives of PRaYAAS is to understand the existing status of various higher education institutes of the state, assess their strengths and weaknesses and suggest the methods of improvement and for overcoming the weakness.

The other objectives of  PRaYAAS is to identify the issues those are to be attended to in priority to improve the overall quality of teaching and learning in the state, to identify the bottlenecks in the existing mechanisms and to identify the opportunities for academic and administrative reforms, to evaluate the optimum utilisation of financial and other resources and to suggest methods for continuous improvement of quality to enable movement in the direction of an accreditation and audit system, the spokesman added.

He said that the State Government is committed towards improving the overall performance of the higher education institutes of the state and bring in a culture of excellence in the present set of activities by strict and continuous audit of the performance of the institutes.

To create a truly world class institute and move towards the culture of excellence amongst the higher education institutes, it is important to carefully and continuously track their performance on pre-defined indicators, identify the key strengths and weaknesses and move towards improving or overcoming the same, he added.

He said that all the principals of government aided and self financing colleges have been asked to give their suggestions or comments in consultation with faculty members on this framework by April 23.