Mock cabinet ministries for children at school

RANCHI: The school education and literacy (SEAL) department secretary Aradhana Patnaik directed all district superintendents of education (DSEs) on Tuesday to strengthen the child cabinets, or reconstitute them by February 15, in schools where they are not active.
The proposal of setting up a child cabinet in every government school of the state was made under the School Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SSHE) programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in 2006.
Recently , Patnaik found that the child cabinets were not active in 30%-40% of schools in mostly rural areas.
Child cabinets were to be constituted in schools to ensure students are aware of democratic values, develop leadership qualities and learn team work.
These cabinet would initially comprise six ministers, including a prime minister, health minister, hygiene minister, security and law minister, education minister and nutrition minister. The plan is to introduce four new ministers in the cabinet.
"We noticed that in schools where child cabinets were functional, government schemes have been running successfully. We decided to add more ministers to the child cabinet and reconstitute them where they were inactive," said Patnaik.
"After they are reconstituted, members of the child cabinet will be trained at the school, block and district level in the last week of February to ensure they carry out their work properly," said Patnaik.
A directive on the number of members in the child cabinet has also been issued, based on the number of students in a school.