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Central schools fail in own quality test by Charu Sudan Kasturi

India’s largest public school chain has accepted that it has failed to improve standards of education in its primary classes two years after it launched a revamp plan, following concerns over learning levels of children.

In a letter to all its 981 schools spread across the country, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) has said an internal survey to assess the revamp has found “shortcomings” on all parameters.

The revamp plan was launched in January 2008 after a learners’ achievement test conducted by the KVS revealed a picture of neglect and low learning standards in primary classes.

The central schools which have routinely been outperforming private schools in Classes X and XII public examinations were suddenly faced with the prospect that they were neglecting primary classes.

“Now, our internal survey suggests we have failed comprehensively in revamping primary education in our schools — and this is a major cause for concern,” a top official told The Telegraph.

The revamp plan, titled “a common minimum programme (CMP) for quality improvement in primary education”, identified five major areas of concern.

These included: central school administrations neglecting primary education, schools not spending from their budget proportionately on these classes, absence of feedback mechanism or system to reward performing teachers and no child-centric classroom interaction.

The programme suggested eight quality parameters to measure improvement in standards — ranging from physical infrastructure and library management to timetable development to include extra-curricular activities.

Earlier this year, the KVS conducted an internal probe analysing the performance of eight randomly picked central schools in Delhi.

The probe revealed that none of the schools had shown “any significant” progress on any of the quality parameters proposed in the CMP.

The National Curriculum Framework of 2005 outlined a greater emphasis on experimentation and extra-curricular activities than on learning based on text books and classroom teaching.

This “child-centric” approach which has been accepted by all states on paper, at least, is the outcome of growing consensus among child psychologists and pedagogists that the system of learning by rote prevalent in most Indian schools was counterproductive.

But the KVS probe found that the schools “were violating the curriculum plan in classrooms — both in letter and in spirit”, a source said.

Many of the central schools have poorly stocked libraries, often without book cases or shelves, and students have to rummage through box full of books, an official involved in the probe said.

“It was scary. If this is the situation of KVs in the capital, one can only imagine how bad things could be in our schools spread across rural areas where monitoring of standards is less rigorous,” the official added.