Kerala: Draft school manual, master plan released

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: General education minister V Sivankutty here on Wednesday released the draft versions of the school manual and academic master plan for the year 2022-23. Both are applicable to schools that follow the state syllabus.
While the school manual tries to touch upon every aspect of school as an institution, the academic master plan tries to address the comprehensive and holistic development of students.
"These documents have been prepared by putting in much effort. A lot of relevant documents, studies and government orders have been referred to. However, it is still a draft version. The final version would be far more comprehensive," the minister said. The school manual was prepared by a team led by the director of general education and the academic master plan by SCERT.
The school manual talks about school working time, time table, the daily, monthly and annual school activity calendar, the division of responsibility among teachers, extracurricular activities in school, health status of students, their achievements in academics and sports. It also mentions duties of students and the responsibilities of parents. It tries to define what quality education means.
The academic master plan is in a sense conceived as a road map to help students and teachers to achieve the ideal objectives of quality education. It wants teachers to consider each student as a single unit and prepare plans to improve the performance of that unit in every plausible sense. It also recommends separate plans to improve the education standards of students who need special care.
"Kerala is a model for the rest of the world when it comes to education. It is time for us to think whether we have been able to disseminate the achievements effectively to all, irrespective of the locale, language, cast, creed, and gender. The academic master plan is part of the efforts to improve our schools as centres of excellence," Sivankutty said.