Most schools fail to meet latest deadline to fill SARAL database

Over 60% of schools could not upload staff details; they were earlier given time till Dec 16

MUMBAI: Over 60% of schools in the city have failed to meet the December 31 deadline to upload details of their staff into the Systematic Administrative Reforms for Achievement of Learning (SARAL), state government’s online database.

Schools blamed the delay on technical glitches on the website.

The state school education department had asked all schools, including private and those affiliated to non-state boards to enter the details of all their staff members-teaching and non-teaching by the end of 2015 or risk not getting staff approvals and grants. Schools were earlier given time till December 16 to fill in the details but the deadline was later extended as most schools did not complete the task in time.

Schools had to upload information about their employees such as their designation, salary details, along with additional information on their appointment, qualification, caste and disability certificates among others.

However, even after the extension,

only 1,544 out of 4,204 schools from the city managed to complete the data entry. It was a similar situation across the state with only 74,393 schools out of 1,09,038 uploading details of 480,493 staff members till Thursday night.

School principals said that the Christmas break and technical problems kept them from filling the details. “We tried to complete the task of uploading the date before we closed for Christmas, but the website was too slow and we could only manage to feed in information of some of our staff,” said a principal from a Byculla school on the condition of anonymity.

Some schools also said that they were also busy with the online registrations of students for the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams, which begins from March this year. “We could not start form filling till late as our computer staff was occupied with SSC exam registrations,” said Prashant Redij, principal, Hilda Castelino School, Kandivli. “No one else in our faculty could work on the online registration.”

Schools have demanded an extension till the end of