Chennai: In order to streamline access to key documents required for higher education and govt welfare schemes, the school education department is creating a database through the Education Management Information System (EMIS) on whether Class XII students require nativity and community certificates.Officials from the school education department said the move followed minister K A Sengottaiyan’s May 22 statement that these certificates would be issued without any hassles.The information will help develop a database at the school-level on students and facilitate arrangement of the certificates, which are useful for enrolling in colleges and applying for govt schemes, an official said. “Earlier, information on whether a student is eligible for community/nativity certificates were only provided in transfer certificates. Now, teachers have been asked to mark the same on EMIS portal,” a school head said.For corporation-run schools, assistant education officers (AEO) have instructed school heads to manually tabulate the number of students requiring such certificates. “There are plans to change the entire process, wherein students will be able to directly apply from schools for these certificates issued by the revenue department. But nothing has been finalised and they are in the proposal stage,” an AEO said.Asked if community details are also being collected, M Aarthi, project director of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which is in-charge of EMIS, said the portal has merely been updated to check whether students needed these certificates. “Yes/No options have been added against every student on the portal to capture whether they have a community and Nativity certificate or not. No details of caste/community are collected from students.School education director S Kannappan said he was unaware of whether any special camps were being planned for the purpose at the moment.
