Primary education is the foundation of
our education system, but it lacks a solid policy of education. If the
foundation is wobbly, one can well imagine the future of the edifice erected
upon it.
Colours of a school building and
uniforms, curriculum, holidays, mid-day meal supplier, scholarship eligibility,
teachers’ eligibility and selection criteria—all fluctuate rapidly with changes
in governments.
Annual school term used to end on May 31
with summer vacations beginning thereafter. Textbooks and notebook were easily
arranged during the vacation and students used to begin the new session from
very well equipped with the study material. Now one term ending on March 31, the
new term begins from April 1 without any preparation or textbook.
School timings are sometimes 7 AM-11 AM
or 8 AM-12 PM giving four hours for education, however in winter, school timings
of 9 AM-3 PM allow six hours of teaching. Preparation of results and
declaration makes the term even shorter. Summer vacations remain for June and
schools reopen on July 1. It is difficult to know why the academic session so
was fragmented, shortened and school timings reduced.
It seems that the education department
is ignoring rural concerns. It may not know that the illiterate parents
cannot assist their children with the homework and that the children have to
work in fields too. A teacher today takes home a good salary between Rs 50,000
and Rs 1 lakh, so he must be asked to stay within the school precinct or the
school timing must be increased so that the homework is done within these
extended hours.
Village schools take a lot of time for
the admission and procurement of books, especially books funded by the
government. Had the titles or the publisher of the textbooks been given to the
parents they could have procured them. The education department neither
disburses the textbooks nor gives students a chance to buy them.
Several teachers retire annually from
village schools and many such posts, lying vacant, are waiting to be filled but
when exactly will the selection board be instituted no one knows. The process
of teacher recruitment adopted by the recruitment board has also been put on
hold. Teacher aides’ (Shiksha Mitr) appointment
was also a formality which lies pending since ages. These were appointed
without meeting the eligibility criterion and in absence of any notification or
competition and were further tried to be regularized as teachers. Teachers and
teacher aides compete with each other in their respective protests regarding
various demands.
The quality of education in village
schools is deplorable. Macaulay knew that he only had to produce clerks from
colonial India, people who could write in English and Hindi. Today’s education
department can’t achieve even that. Where teachers themselves lack in skills
such as good handwriting and diction, it is unlikely for them to inculcate
these in their students.
To overcome the shortage of the
teaching staff, the legal issues must be resolved and National Livelihood
Guarantee Act should be linked with the Right to Education Act 2005. This would
enable the livelihood guarantee scheme to produce teachers at the local level just
like menial jobs that it creates presently. Such youths appointed by the gram
pradhan would, under his supervision, be able to fill up the immediate need for
teachers in the primary school.
No one counts the actual academic days
available out of 365 given days. Birthdays and death anniversaries of great
people are observed as holidays but the parameters for the greatness vary with
the changes in the government. Sometimes Kanshiram’s birth and
death anniversaries are both observed as holidays sometimes none. Suddenly the
holidays pop up commemorating the birth of Parashuram and Hazrat Ali, sometimes
Nag Panchami holiday is withheld for a couple of years and then resumed.
Previously there were a total of 30 holidays, now there are 54. Not even half
of days are available for academic activity.
Sometimes it is said that classes V
and VIII will have board exams sometimes exams are dropped altogether for these
classes. It was once informed that nobody would be failed; now it is being told
that students can be failed. It was also said once that the teachers will fetch
students from their homes, bathe them and drop them off at home after school.
Mid-day meal is sometimes prepared within the school, somewhere else it is
sourced from some external agency, sometimes it is talked that dry-fruits and milk
would be distributed while many schools end up feeding salt and roti to the
kids. How the funds from the World Bank can be appropriated in the name of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan –is the sole concern.
For the educational reform it is
necessary that at each level district school inspector, deputy inspector must
function like before to provide intense scrutiny. Currently, we have officials
at each level like basic education officer, block education officer, but not
inspectors. No reform is possible without the dissolution of the post of Basic
Education Officer. This post has become a trading hub for transfers and postings
besides of course appointments. The failure to institute a board for teachers’
recruitment is also a doing of this racket.
There is one solution — decentralization
of the primary education till the level of panchayat and statutory
responsibility to be vested with the pradhans. In order to do this, the
pradhans would have to be compulsorily literate. Another option would be for
the government to accept that it cannot provide high-end primary education to
everyone. The government simply may opt-out of primary education leaving it in
private hands because after all even today the parents wish their children to
go to private schools.
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