A school is a tiny unit of our large education system, where every spur-gear need to work in harmony. Failure of one small component engenders the collapse of the whole system. Taking a close look at the education system, and the scope of the challenges is readily apparent. Government has provisions at place to ensure primary schooling for every one child and with that intention it providing a free meal, text-books, mid-day, school dress and several scholarships. Still, people are losing faith in public schools. Provided the choice hardly anyone wants their child to be in public school.
With faulty policies at the place, we were trying to address the wrong question for decades. As a country, we have the largest footprints of schools and one of the deepest learning crises. We’ve built many tiny schools in every village, town, hamlet, nook and corner of the country. Comparing with China which has 5 lakh schools and we have 15 lakhs where china is more populous and three times our size. And, when it comes to learning Chinese kids are in the top five and ours are in the bottom five globally. We have certainly built a place to go to but apparently not a place to learn.
Visiting a classroom of public school is fairly depressing, one teacher at a time struggling to teach multiple classes at a time. What to teach and what not to become questionable perhaps addition for class 2 or multiplication for class3, the teacher is genuinely lost what to teach. The same teacher then mark attendance, takes care of administrative chores, supervise cooking and serving of mid-day meal. After lunch, there are some half-hearted but futile attempt to get kids back to classes and at 1:30, school disperse. It’s hard to call it a school perhaps a daycare centre serving a meal. And this is not the story on one, We’ve nearly 5 lakh schools with 3Cr students, very few resources and 1 or 2 teachers. With no clerical staff teachers spend more time entering data rather addressing systemic issues of content and teacher training. Clearly, we are not putting our resources for best use.
School systems have high vacancies at critical roles, misdirected accountability system, weak teacher training system and lack of focus on the quality of education. We need to reconsider whether we want to bring school to student or student to school.
Our system needs to go through some radical changes, starting from thoughtful mergers of sub-schools. Decentralization of power is quintessential; local authorities should be empowered to carry out an assessment and take the decision regarding consolidation taking consultation from parents, community and teachers. Performance assessments should focus on how well teachers are developing their students and the quality of training for teachers. A teacher should be better trained and equipped to involve parents for the holistic development of the child, the environment should be such where community take the ownership of schools and its management.
System needs to make the way and change for the better.
Transforming School Education: 21st Century Solutions
