School edu dept to re-introduce forums for Classes 6 to 9

CHENNAI: The School Education Department is set to re-introduce various forums at government schools that were intended to promote co-educational activities for students. Though the forums were active earlier, it has not been functional since the outbreak of the pandemic.

School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi announced the re-introduction of forums while making a grant request for the academic year 2022-23, in the Assembly session.

Therefore, owing to the announcement made by the minister, all government and government-aided schools will actively hold forums for students of Classes 6 to 9. The weekly forum activities will include literacy forum (both in Tamil and English), environment forum, quiz forum, fine arts forum, film forum and performing arts forum.

Subsequently, the department has informed that programmes and competitions should be organised on routine. And additionally, forums like consumer forum, Information Technology (IT) forum, disaster management forum, voter awareness forum, child rights protection forum can be established and functioned according to the interest of the respective schools.

The department has further made it mandatory for all schools to reserve classes for arts and culture activities and for forum activities. Further, all district education officers must conduct a monthly competition.

Students who excel in select forums and quiz activities held at district-levels in January and February will be participating in State-level competitions, subsequently.