Parents to volunteer as ‘School Mitras’ of Delhi Government schools

Government schools in Delhi will be seeking help from volunteer parents, who will be addressed as ‘School Mitras’. This initiative is being taken to bridge the gap between School Management Committees (SMCs) and parents. The recently released report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is the catalyst of the initiative. According to the report, despite active involvement of the SMCs in the schools, 63 per cent parents of the government school students in Delhi do not know about the existence of SMCs.

“This is an uncomfortable sign since SMCs are meant to act as a bridge between parents and the schools. This gap seems to exist because there is no structure or mechanism by which SMC members can reach out to the parents on an ongoing basis,” mentioned Zareen Taj, Additional Director, Directorate of Education (DoE). To bridge this gap between parents and SMCs, volunteer parents have been nominated as ‘School Mitras’ to indulge in community services by assisting SMCs. In addition to this, a zonal-level committee of five people comprising of two teacher conveners, two SMC members and one nodal officer will be monitoring the progress of this new parents’ outreach programme in the respective zone. The panel will be taking regular feedback from the teacher convener of the respective school and coordinate with the head of the school for making the outreach initiative successful.