In a relief for teachers, the Tamil Nadu School Education Department will be outsourcing the Educational Management Information System (EMIS) data entry work from the upcoming academic year. The EMIS portal, introduced in 2018, stores all the information of schools, teachers, and students in government, aided and private schools.
At present, the teachers are tasked with carrying out the data entry work. They had petitioned the government to outsource the work as it took away time from their teaching periods.
School Education Department Secretary J. Kumaragurubaran said, “Work is under way to set up hi-tech labs in 8,500 middle schools where educators for this task will be appointed through the labs. Likewise, lab assistants were employed in about 6,000 high and higher secondary schools. They will take up the EMIS work.”
These assistants will be assigned 2-3 schools each which would also include primary schools, and they would carry out the EMIS work of the school. “They will begin functioning from June first week,” he added.
Easy info via WhatsApp Channel
Meanwhile, the School Education Department has also planned to roll out a WhatsApp Channel for easy communication between the teachers and the department. To support this, the department is also in the process of authenticating of 1.6 crore phone numbers in the EMIS portal.
As the numbers were not verified, it had been difficult for the department to follow up regarding higher education as only 40% of the calls connected with the right numbers. “To correct this, an OTP is now being given, so that the right phone numbers can be verified. So far, 5 lakh numbers have been collected,” said Mr. Kumaragurubaran.
The WhatsApp channel would be able to disseminate bulk information too in a short period of time. “The testing for this is finished and will soon be rolled out once the phone numbers are collected. This will also help the headmasters of the school to communicate with the parents easily in terms of attendance or circulars such as distribution of books or sandals,” the Secretary added.
