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YOJANA JANUARY 2016
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Global Initiative for Academic Networks
The Ministry of Human Resources Development has
launched this initiative to allow an interface between
institutions of higher learning of India and Institutes of
academic excellence abroad. The professors from foreign
universities shall visit these institutes an take courses.
These shall be available to the students of these institutes
free-of-cost and students of other institutes at nominal
charge.
These courses shall also be uploaded on SWAYAM,
Massive open-online-courses portal of India and National
Knowledge Library, IIT Kharagpur.
IMPRINT - INDIA:
Initiative by IIT's and IISC to do research in
10 high impact areas that affect Indian society and measure
the outcomes of this research.
Inactivated Polio vaccine [IPV]
Inactivated Polio vaccine [IPV] to be given with the
Oral polio vaccine [OPV] in India as a part of its strategy to
end polio from the world. IPV is administered as an
injection and has no risk unlike OPV.
Transforming School Education
The Nation after independence has focused on changing the
nature of colonial education into a form which is mass based
and ensures social justice and equality. Right to
Education Act, 2009 made education a fundamental right.
The country also wants to make secondary education universal
and higher education accessible to all. Achieving a near
universal enrollment ratio was a great step. Now the focus
should be on ensuring quality education but without harming
equity [Right to education for all].
Solutions for improving quality of education:
Governments at center and state have believed in a supply
based approach for locating schools. Hence governments have
opened schools near village fringes or forest areas for tribal
children. This was done for ensuring universal enrollment. But
such schools are economically un-viable. This has led to under
utilization of resources and can be corrected by consolidation
of certain schools which cater to limited students to make
them economically feasible.
Instead of this top down approach where a school has to be
located within every 1.5 sq km area a new strategy of ensuring
universal access needs to be investigated like improving
access by transportation or by building hostels for students.
Early childhood care and nutrition is important in shaping the
future of the child. A child who has access to nutrition and
healthcare prior to his entering a formal school has a better
chance of success. The nation needs to focus on provide pre
school facilities along with nutrition and healthcare at early
childhood phase to ensure that by the time children enter
schools he is prepared to take best advantage of education. A
pre school ensures school readiness for the child, facilitates
socialization and self control.
However the Integrated Child development scheme for 0-6 year
olds is inadequate in this and an independent scheme needs to
be formulated.
Poverty ensures that families have to force their children
into labor to ease the family burden. This is due to a debt
trap that most families find themselves in throughout their
life.
Education is seen as a means to break from this cycle. And it
has been observed that the poorest of poor families would
prefer sending their children to schools rather than make them
work if they can afford it. Thus governments should focus on
creating conditions that enable parents to send their children
to school rather using the legislative option of banning child
labor.
Teacher eligibility tests were conducted to screen
applicants seeking to enter this profession but the failure
ratio in them reveals the poor quality of aspirants seeking
to enter this profession. To resolve this it is necessary to
combine various approaches like:
- Improve pre-service teacher education programs,
- promote life long learning for professional development
of a teacher,
- incentivize participation in skill upgradation programs
with improved career prospects.
To instill a sense of ownership and institutional
commitment in teachers by appointing them to schools and not
the system as is currently done. However the centralized
control over appointment and transfer is politically
important tool and won't be relinquished. The practice of
changing the attitude of the system towards a teacher is
also important as currently a teacher is viewed only as a
passive entity that implements decisions made by the
education board.
As we move towards an information society we have to
recognize that lack of utilization of ICT tools in
transformation of education shall create a rift between
elite and marginalized. ICT has already grown and touched
many areas and if the schools aren't able to adopt these
practices then their students shall not be able to
participate in the information society and this may
marginalize them further.
- Involving professionals from elite institutions of India
have to be involved in imparting science education to
schools in their zones.
- Change focus of system from emphasis on higher marks,
grades, pass percentage to impart holistic education.
- Consolidating efforts of Corporate sector, government
and civil society in improving school education.
- Need to evaluate the credibility of testing methods,
validity of quantifying learning, nature of assessment
indicators used.
- School management committees, parent teachers
associations etc. need to be empowered, engaged actively.
Funding Education
Historically and even in present, Education has been funded
by State institutions in developing as well as advanced
countries. Public funding ensures that education remains a
public good, ensures equitable expansion, promotes common
interest of citizens, serves national development needs.
A 6% of GDP spending target was envisioned but not followed
at both central and state level. Flow of funding to
educational institutions is important to ensure they have
adequate resources. Their own needs have to considered in
funding them. Funding should adequately rewards institutions
that are performing well.
A trend in advanced countries is of funding elementary
educations by State funds and higher institutions by a
combination of State, Philanthropists, Alumni, Civil society
and Corporate donations. Student contribution in terms of
fees is a minority in this. In India the philanthropic
source of funding is not considered and a framework needs to
be worked out to take advantage of this section.
Inclusive Education [Girls and Children with special
needs]
The interplay of socio economic inequalities and gender
relations creates a complex system that impedes a girls
ability to go to school. The gender gap studies focused on
mapping supply i.e. provision of schooling with the demand
i.e. readiness of families to send children to school. But
it was found that supply and demand were interlinked so
where there were functioning schools the parents would send
their children to it. But where schools were dysfunctional
parents would refrain from sending children to it.
Another reason that affected dropout rates was the teacher
attitude, reinforcing of prejudices and social biases by
curriculum and attitudes of children from forward social
communities.
Geographical isolation has lead to marginalization of
certain sections of India. Recent programs have improved
their access and enrollment but when checked in terms of
average years of schooling this has been a negative. This
could be due to hostility from teachers as well as other
children.
Solutions:
- Meaningful access: Access to education
should not be limited to getting admission only but the
student irrespective of his background should get the best
facility available from the institution.
- Safe non discriminatory access: Teachers
should be sensitized towards students so that they don't
bring prejudices in schools.
- Cooperative learning: Students are
taught to built social skills and peer relationships
instead of focusing on outshining others. Students explain
concepts to each other and use team work to solve
problems.
- Physical accessibility: Modifying
existing infrastructure to make it disability friendly. Sugamya
Bharat Abhiyan [Accessiblity India campaign
under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment] was
launched to make universal accessibility for persons with
disabilities.
- Displacement and Age: Displacement may
occur due to environmental stress, calamities etc which
causes economically weaker sections to migrate to other
places. The children loose out on education due to this.
One solution for this problem could be seasonal hostels
for such students. People who were never enrolled might
face a humiliation of enrolling with students of lesser
age. This can be solved by having an accelerated
curriculum and special training for them.
Factoids
- NPTEL - Massive Online Open Courses on
engineering and technology
- National Repository of Open Educational
Resources - TIFR, Mumbai
- Department of Electronics and Information Technology,
the Indian Language Initiatives.
- Kasturba gandhi Balika vidyalaya -
Under sarva shikshan abhiyaan to provide residential
facility to dropped out girls of upper primary.
- India's first research park - IIT Madras
- ‘Study Webs of
Active Learning for Young Aspiring
Minds' SWAYAM - India's e-learning platform
- Education development index - Presented
every year by UNESCO in its report "Education for all
global monitoring report". It is between 0-1 and 1 means
best. It has 4 indicators.
1. Universal
Primary Education (UPE)
2.Adult Literacy
3.Quality of Education
and
4.Gender Parity
- SARANSH: Self review and analysis of
student's performance and progress. MHRD project.
- Global innovation index - World
intellectual property organization.