A1 Balasore Mentorship Program Aims to Transform Academic Performance of 10th Students

Balasore: With an aim to bring out the best of the students by focusing on mentorship and individual attention, the Balasore district administration has come up with the innovative A1 Balasore mentorship program for 10th class students.

To be implemented by the Education Department in all the secondary schools of the district, the A1 Balasore program for Class- X students will focus on trusting relationship and accountability among the Mentor (Teachers) and mentee students. It also focuses on the development of self esteem, learning ability and academic excellence of the students by targeting maximum number of students to excel prudence academically in their career. The A1 Balasore program aims that each transformed High School will must fetch 50 percent A1 students every year.

As the teachers as mentors play a pivotal role in this program, they will have to adopt the students and help achieve expected goals and outcomes. The Education Department has also issued a Standard Operating Procedure to make it a success. According to the SOP, Headmasters should analyse the previous year results of the school with all staff. Anecdotal progress record of the students should be maintained by the Class Teacher and one diagnostic evaluation should be conducted of all students to know the strengths and weaknesses of all students in their study.

It also calls for doubt clearing classes along with motivational and stress management classes to be arranged in the schools. The Headmaster/Headmistress should take the feedback to review the progress of the students from the teachers regularly on every Saturday. Monthly Parent Teacher Meetings should be conducted assess the progress of the students.

The SOP calls for encouraging optimum utilisation of e-library by the students in order to develop the reading habit and self study ability and enhance their intelligence. Use of laboratory for proper understanding of scientific experiments/facts must be emphasized. Teachers in charge of the laboratory will ensure the utlisation of the laboratories with the help of other science teachers.

Schools having best performance will be rewarded for their achievement and the worst performance schools will be asked for explanation to sort out the problems and resolve accordingly.

According to the program, the mentoring teachers should adopt 5-10 students for counseling and guidance in their studies. They will observe the progress of each student, maintain records, analyse the progress report and discuss it with their parents. Each mentor teacher should focus on each student’s performance, ability etc. A target in terms of marks should be set for each student after discussion and POA for each student should be prepared.

The A1 Balasore program was launched on Monday by Collector Dattatraya Bhausaheb Shinde. It will be implemented from this academic year itself and has all the potential to become a game changer in students’ performance.