Over 1283 ST, SC hostels in 10 districts of Bhubaneswar to be assessed under 'Mission Suvidya'

Encouraged by the first phase results under Mission Suvidya, the ST and SC Development department has planned to take up assessment of hostels in 10 more districts under the project.

The phase-II will cover all 1,283 hostels spread over 10 districts while subsequent phases will be conducted for only those hostels deemed prepared (DP) for onsite assessment after phase-I, sources in the department said.

The methodology in phase-II will be implemented through a smart IT-enabled solution. The selected hostels will conduct self-assessment through the online desktop application. The report and score of self-assessment will be shared with the National Accreditation Board for Education and Training (NABET) team through this application. A pre-visit virtual tour to gauge the readiness of the hostels will also be undertaken by NABET team online.

The evidence/records required for assessing the virtual tour will be uploaded by each selected hostel on the online platform. Onsite assessment will only be planned for hostels after they shared their self-assessment score along with documentary evidence with NABET.

The State Government had initiated Mission Suvidya last year in collaboration with NABET and Quality Council of India (QCI) with an effort to standardise the management processes, systems and procedures in ST&SC (SSD) hostels to improve the basic services.

As part of the mission, NABET-QCI collaborated with department to assess, evaluate and benchmark these hostels. The evaluation of the residential hostels was based primarily on seven parameters such as governance & management, health & nutrition, safety & security, human resource, basic amenities and recreation and quality assurance mechanism.

The final grade will be awarded to each hostel on the basis of their facilities, initiatives and processes under these parameters. The end objective was to provide concrete recommendations to prepare these hostels for ISO 9001:2015 certifications.

Under phase-I of the project, NABET had assessed 246 hostels in two districts - Keonjhar (156) and Sambalpur (90) respectively. Of these, 60 hostels in Keonjhar and 12 in Sambalpur were selected by the department for intensive interventions of gap-filling towards attaining ISO 9001:2015 certification.

All 44 hostels assessed before the Covid-19 lockdown, qualified the assessment parameters and were awarded ISO certification.