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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Education needs radical reform -Dileep Ranjekar

Education needs radical reform -Dileep Ranjekar

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published Published on Nov 9, 2017   modified Modified on Nov 9, 2017
-CivilSocietyOnline.com

At a recent interaction with a large group of colleagues in a regional meeting, one relatively junior member who visits schools daily as part of his training schedule was very disturbed with his experiences in a school. He did not like the way teachers were treated by senior functionaries when they visited the school. The functionaries did not empathise with several situations that the teachers faced in the school — such as the degree of difficulty multigrade teaching creates for the teacher or the artificial pressure of completing the syllabus that gets created without consideration as to whether the children are actually learning or whether there is an appropriate teacher-pupil ratio.

He said that while the mid-day meal programme is an important one for children, it is not the only purpose of the school. But the education administration places a disproportionate emphasis on the programme. While there is constant scrutiny of the mid-day meal programme, there isn’t equal focus on learning outcomes. The administration was very prompt in taking punitive action if something went wrong with the mid-day meal. However, there wasn’t such rigorous evaluation of teaching-learning or continuous comprehensive evaluation processes.

Another colleague interacts with senior educational functionaries vested with the responsibility of education across the state. She often finds that the perception and priorities of many education functionaries are radically different from what happens in the schools. She asked whether it is possible for the Azim Premji Foundation to engage with institutions (such as the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy) to develop the right social and education perspective among these functionaries.

Many feel that the critical reason why our current education system is failing to achieve its stated goals is that the functionaries who are required to administer our large education system are not qualified and competent since they have not been prepared to deal with the complex challenges.

One of the most striking features that I observed in Finland about five years ago was a thoroughly shared understanding among the academic and administrative departments that were responsible for education in the country. We spent a lot of time with the university that helped the State in developing the agenda, the curriculum board, the textbook preparation board, the teachers and principals of the schools and also the school administration department. There was a striking similarity in the way they spoke.  Their overarching concern was: “How do we help our schools in achieving the education objectives?” The university is deeply engaged in researching the processes in schools and also building capacity among the teacher preparation institutions. It studies and formulates strategies for dealing with issues such as pre-school education, strategies for children with learning disabilities, and so on. The curriculum board is not only engaged with writing the philosophy of education but also with how it can be translated in the classroom through pedagogic processes. The administration has a clear map of how it will manage the schedules of school timings, appointment of teachers and addressing the infrastructure issues and is constantly tracking their own performance in helping the schools.

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CivilSocietyOnline.com, November, 2017, http://www.civilsocietyonline.com/column/back-to-school/education-needs-radical-reform/


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