Punjab school mentorship programme: 80 IAS and IPS officers to visit adopted schools from today

Indian Express

20-05-2025

The Punjab government's 'School Mentorship Programme' will begin on Tuesday with the final list of 80 IAS/IPS/PCS/PPS officers, who have adopted as many government schools, regularly interacting with students and providing them career guidance.
For instance, Khanna SSP Jyoti Yadav, the wife of Punjab Education Minister Harjot Bains, has adopted School of Eminence, Nangal, in Roopnagar district, their home district.
Ludhiana Deputy Commissioner Himanshu Jain has adopted School of Eminence, Dholewal, Ludhiana, while Amritsar Deputy Commissioner Sakshi Sawhney has adopted School of Eminence, Khanna.
Moga SSP Ajay Gandhi has adopted School of Eminence at Landeke in Moga district, while former education secretary Kamal Kishor Yadav has adopted School of Eminence in Nakodar.
Punjab Education Secretary Anindita Mitra said, 'The department has allotted schools to the officers. The programme will begin on Tuesday, with the officers visiting their respective schools.'
Mitra has issued letters to all 80 officers on the list.
According to the letters, 'Your presence and guidance will offer much-needed motivation to school staff and students and can significantly contribute to strengthening the culture of aspiration, dreams and highest performance in our government schools…. The School Mentorship Programme is conceived as a long-term engagement, with officers encouraged to continue mentoring the same school for a minimum of five years. The nature of engagement is flexible and may be shaped as per mutual convenience. However, officers are expected to maintain continuity of interaction and aim for at least one in-person visit per month, supplemented by remote follow-ups as feasible.'
'The role of the mentor officer is non-administrative and facilitative. Officers are not expected to intervene in routine operations or school-level administration. Rather, they are expected to offer encouragement, constructive feedback, and strategic support to the school leadership…. All engagement under this programme shall be treated as part of official duties,' the letter adds.
The Punjab government has introduced a unique 'School Mentorship Programme', in which bureaucrats are being roped in to inspire and guide young minds to aim high in life. The initiative aims to bridge aspirations and opportunities for government school students by connecting them with civil servants.
Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab.
Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab.
She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on 'Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers' had won accolades at IIMC.
She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012.
Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab.
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