VIJAYAWADA: AP government has issued an order creating 692 new mandal education officer (MEO) posts. As per the relevant GO 154, there will be 13 new MEOs in category 1 and 679 in category 2.
Making the announcement, chief secretary (School Education) B. Rajasekhar underlined that state government is giving high priority to education, so that academic standards in schools could improve.
Previously, workload of mandal educational officers had been limited, as there were not as many schools. The MEOs could thus focus on both academics and administration. However, the number of schools has now gone up. As a result, the workload of MEO, the first field level officer, has increased enormously. They are thus unable to focus on either academics or administration.
Therefore, it is now essential that there be one mandal educational officer exclusively looking after academics and another MEO taking care of administration and monitoring of government’s schemes. This will improve the learning outcomes among students. Accordingly, the new GO has been issued creating 692 new MEO posts, chief secretary stated.
While welcoming the creation of new MEO posts, AP Municipal Teachers Federation state president S. Ramakrishna regretted that only zilla parishad and government teachers are being promoted as MEOs but not municipal teachers. He sought that government also issue orders promoting municipal teachers to the newly formed MEO posts.
AP SC, ST Upadhyaya Sangham state president Samala Simhachalam welcomed GO 154 saying Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has created a new history in Andhra Pradesh by resolving the long-pending issues within the education department. He thanked CM Jagan as also education minister Botsa Satyanarayana for creation of the new posts.
