Section 119 in Tamil Nadu Educational Inspection Code
119. Relation of Inspecting Officers with parents.
- The Inspecting Officer should always try to meet the leading residents of the locality after inspection to discuss school affairs. He should endeavour to establish and maintain friendly relations between the teachers and parents by pointing out ways in which they can help one another. The formation of local parents' associations or the establishment of small school committees must be encouraged in every way. Such organisations should not be regarded merely formal, but every step should be taken by the Inspecting Officer by identifying himself with the welfare of the children of the village to make them living factors in the cause of the improvement of the school. The Inspecting Officer should endeavour to understand the real difficulties, if any, of the parents and suggest ways and means of overcoming them. It is by his contact with the parents and the local residents that the Inspecting Officer can be in a position to give effect intelligently to the departmental instructions on the adjustment of school hours, holidays and vacations in accordance with the local interest and create a feeling that the welfare of the school is their won intimate concern and that the teachers alone cannot single-handedly achieve the object of the school and that their cooperation is an essential condition for the success of the school like the success of other village civic and social endeavours.Meeting of Parents AssociationsThese should be convened in addition to and not in the place of informal talks and personal appeals. Many teachers appear to regard those meetings as consisting merely of entertainments and Deputy Inspectors should dispel this idea and impress on them the constructive aspect of the meeting. This, however, does not preclude exhibiting to the parents examples of their children's achievements, but the main aims of propaganda should, never be lost sight of. There is often a tendency to make annual Parents Day a gala day not so much for the parents themselves as for all the people in the village by arranging entrainments which lose sight of the aims being in unmanageable crowds who often keep out, for want of space, the very parents for whose education the function is arranged and who have been specifically invited for the occasion. This danger, arising from a too disproportionate attention to the entertainment should be guarded against. The best way will be to keep pure entertainments distinct from parents-day meetings.It will be useful device for the purpose of the follow-up for the Inspecting Officer to maintain a small note book in which details of the propaganda may be briefly noted, along with the names of the local person seen. When visiting the village on a later occasion, the same persons can be seen and the effect of previous propaganda gauged. This alone will help to induce a serious attitude in the local persons even if the first effort of propaganda has not had the desired effect. Such a device will help continuity of propaganda, which is an essential element of its effectiveness. The note-book need not be different from the one in which attendance, etc., at visits are noted provided that instead recording visits in chronological order, a page is allotted to a school and all notes regarding the school are made in the page.
