Guwahati, Dec 26(IANS): The Assam government has awarded the best performing schools in the state education department's yearly evaluation programme 'Gunotsav'.

A total of 4,841 schools managed to secure A+ grades in the last Gunotsav evaluation. Each of these schools have been awarded a cash incentive of Rs 25,000.

Attending a programme related to this on Sunday, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said this year's Gunotsav Award is being handed over to the recipient schools today to correlate with the observance of December 25 of every year as "Good Governance Day" all throughout the country as a mark of respect towards the late former prime Minister Atal Vihari Vajpayee.

He spoke about the role of Vajpayee in the launch of Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan during his tenure as the Prime Minister.

"This was a manifestation of the importance Vajpayee ji had accorded to the spread of quality education among all sections of the society," Chief Minister said.

Sarma, referring to Gunotsav as an alternative method to measure the quality of education in schools over the traditional system of written examination, termed it a process of continuous evaluation that enables the stakeholders to focus on the strong as well as the weak points as far as imparting of education is concerned.

The Chief Minister further added that the conferring of Gunotsav Award was a recognition to the contribution of the teachers and school staff towards the process of nation-building.

He exuded confidence that the dedication with which the teaching fraternity are carrying out their official obligations and duty would benefit a large number of students achieve their goals in life.

He also appealed to the teachers to work towards developing a competitive environment in their educational institutions so that more number of candidates from the State manage to secure seats in top educational institutions such as IITs, IIMs etc.

Sarma requested the teaching fraternity to make extensive use of latest technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, mixed reality, among others, to make the process of imparting education a pleasant and interesting experience for the students.

The Chief Minister today made a couple of announcements aimed at motivating school teachers to work with greater zeal and dedication. He said that from next year onwards, schools that secure A+ grades in Gunotsav continuously for two years in a row would be awarded with incentives of Rs 50,000 each.

Also, an additional teacher above the sanctioned strength will be appointed in such schools as an incentive.

Further, he said those teachers working on contractual basis in such schools will be given permanent appointment by the government.

The Chief Minister on Sunday also inaugurated two apps -- Analytics Powered E-Classroom and Shiksha Setu Axom, that are aimed at widening the technological outreach of the education department.