Gunotsav 2024: Here is how Assam assesses students and schools via state-wide drive

Gunotsav is an initiative of the Assam government to improve the quality of school education. As part of this exercise, four core areas -- scholastic (learning outcomes of children), co-scholastic, infrastructure, and community participation -- are evaluated, while schools across the state are given grades based on performance.

As per the official website, the Gunotsav exercise helps the government identify the learning gaps and take appropriate remedial measures to attain grade-specific learning outcomes by children.

This year, Gunotsav will witness the participation of all stakeholders, including teachers, students, administrators and local communities, enhancing accountability among them for quality education, the Assam Education Minister said.

The state government will carry out ‘Gunotsav 2024’ in three phases -- first will cover 12 districts from January 3-6; 13 districts from January 9-12; while the remaining 10 districts will be evaluated in the last leg from February 5-8.

The exercise will identify the learning gaps of each child and ensure quality education with grade-specific outcomes, Ranoj Pegu said.

“It will also assess the performance of schools on areas such as scholastic, co-scholastic, availability and utilisation of infrastructure and community participation,” he added.

This year, as many as 18,098 external evaluators will be deployed across the state as part of the exercise. Also, the chief minister, MLAs, chief secretary, and college teachers among others will visit the schools as external evaluators.

Organised for the first time in 2017, Gunotsav covers all the districts of Assam. Last year, it was conducted from January 18 to February 18 in three phases.

The exercise saw the participation of a total of 44,531 schools last year, while over 40 lakh students from Classes I to IX were evaluated by the external evaluators and grading of 41,507 schools was done. This did not include schools having enrollment of less than 15 students.