By: Shalini S. Sharma
The most sought-after amendment at the meeting of Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) in October last year at Vigyan Bhawan was withdrawal of the “no detention policy” in schools which has so far been ensuring compulsory promotion of all children till class VIII, regardless of whether they had achieved the required levels of learning or not. Brought in as part of the Right to Education (RTE) in 2010 to take away the stigma attached with failure and encourage learning for the sake of knowledge without fear and pressure, this provision has had the most undesirable effect on learning outcomes in schools. Various indicators have been showing for the past several years that performance levels in school children have been coming down. Now the government has decided to do away with this provision partially and have check points at class VI and VIII. There are two strong and opposing views in this case. Those in favour of the “no detention policy” feel that it is going to lead to increased drop-out at the primary level and that no detention should not be confused with no assessment, and in turn, no remedial action. They feel that taking away this provision will dilute the purpose of RTE by denying the child her / his right to education on the basis of ability to learn.
Those against this policy, i.e., those who favour detention of ill-performing students in a class / failure in exam and promotion to the next class, say that in the absence of any checks on the performance of students, promotion to the next level is taking place without any learning. This, they feel, is leading to decline of education standards in schools. Perhaps both the arguments have their merit. No detention does not mean that there cannot be any exams at the end of the year. All that this provision says is do not detain the child on the basis of poor performance. It does not restrict further assistance or extra attention on improving the learning outcomes of such children. This is what is desirable, this is what should happen in an ideal scenario. But unfortunately, our numbers do not render this possible. Specially in government schools, where there is little pressure on teachers to ensure minimum learning outcomes of their students, such specialized, one-on-one attention is rarely seen to be taking place. What then happens is that all students get uniformly promoted without any check and balance. If an ideal situation is not achievable then what is achievable should be desired.
Who knows, the dropout rate may actually come down once parents start seeing that there is actually some meaning to their child going to school, that there is somebody monitoring his / her progress.
Consolidation of schools
Mergers and acquisitions for the sake of consolidation have been going on for some years now in private schools. The same is set to happen in government schools too. The ministry of HRD’s draft notification on the same some weeks back, points out the success of this initiative in Rajasthan and seeks to extend the same in other states where there are several schools which have either zero or single enrolment. During the meeting of Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) in October last year, it was Daljeet Singh Cheema, the education minister of Punjab, who had put forth this idea for adoption at the central level.
AICTE – CII Survey
One of the biggest online surveys of industry linkages of technical institutions is taking place in the country these days. Being conducted every year by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in partnership with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), this survey has established a culture of record keeping in institutions. The fact that they are required to authenticate their data by providing proof of having worked with companies, means that they have become meticulous keepers of paper trails of all conversations with industry. This habit, which they started forming in 2012 with the inception of the AICTE-CII Survey, is now helping them in providing data for ministry of HRD’s own ranking survey, called the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). They are also required to provide data for the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE), also conducted by the ministry of HRD every year.
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