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RTE Act The way to go
Campus Notes Admission deadline
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RTE Act
The way to go I have on my table, two communications received during the last two weeks. One of them is a rather hysterical letter from a Principal running a school somewhere in the South, inviting me to join an association that is being formed to legally fight the implementation of the Right to Education Act and asking me to contribute towards the legal expenses. The other, more sober, is in the form of the minutes of a meeting of the Association of Non-aided Schools, Chandigarh region. This mentions, with ill-concealed glee, the petitions that have been filed against the implementation of the Act. These minutes also mention a decision that all member schools should contribute to the expenses of the legal action that the association itself is planning to take. Considering my total lack of knowledge and expertise in pedagogical matters, I know that I am hardly in a position to offer an opinion on this situation. But with 46 years of teaching experience behind me, I cannot help but feel strongly about certain aspects of the Act. First and foremost, the Act is here to stay; no amount of legal action or opposition is going to wish it away. Rather than waste our energies in opposing it, I feel we should make a virtue of necessity and start working on how we will cope with the changes that are going to come with its implementation. There is going to be a churning, there might, perhaps, be total chaos for sometime. But, ultimately, some good will emerge. After all even the oceans were subjected to a tremendous churning before the Gods could get their nectar. The controversies generated over the Act in the media and in education circles seem to be predominantly limited to the effects that some provisions of the Act will have on the functioning of private schools. Since these constitute the eye of the storm, it becomes necessary to deal with them first. Let’s start at the beginning of the child’s academic career—the process of admission. The Act prohibits the adoption of any screening procedures as a part of the admission process. Screening procedures is defined as “the method of selecting for admission of a child in preference over another, other than random method”. I can remember a time when no screening procedures were adopted. In my own case, in 1949, I was admitted to Sanawar without having to go through any screening procedure. This was the ideal situation where a child could choose the school he wanted to attend. Admission procedures began to be adopted when the number of children became more than the seats available in schools. The population of school-going children grew by leaps and bounds, while the number of new schools being established grew at a snail’s pace. Today, we are confronted with the horrendous situation where many schools often have 40 children trying for admission to every seat available. The schools cannot admit this huge number and some process of selection has to be adopted. Since marks have now become the be all and end all of school activity, it was perhaps inevitable that this selection procedure should initially have taken the form of admission tests on the basis of which a merit list was drawn up and admission offered to the meritorious children. In fact, this is the very objection that my “hysterical” Principal makes against random admission—less meritorious children will be admitted and school results will suffer. This testing procedure by itself raises a number of questions. What exactly can be tested in a two and half years old child? Is it really fair to test him? And can any test succeed, with any degree of objectivity, in establishing merit at this age? It is the failure of the system that we do not have the capacity to take in all the children, but by testing the children and turning away a large number, we transfer the burden of failure to the shoulders of these little children. Every child who is turned away goes with the feeling of having failed. We have subjected the child to the trauma of failure at the age of two and a half. I am not too sure that an entrance test really succeeds in establishing the merit of the child. A number of years ago in YPS, Patiala, I was faced with some extravagant demands by an agitating workers’ union. If I was forced to concede any of these demands, our budget would have been thrown out of gear. To cater to this contingency, I added another section to Prep I in order to raise additional finances. We used to take 60 children in Prep I, so I admitted the next 20 on our so-called merit list. By the end of the year, most of these ‘weaker’ students were scoring better grades than the ‘brighter’ children who had been admitted initially. Perhaps there has been a tacit recognition of the fact that entrance tests at the initial stage of admission fail to establish merit and as a result, the admission procedure has evolved in a different direction. The procedure now includes interviews of children and even of parents. The interview of the child does nothing more than establish the child’s familiarity with spoken English and that of the parent does nothing more than establish his educational and economic level. In fact, a prestigious school in Chandigarh even needs to know what vehicle the prospective parent drives! The attempt at establishing merit is further diluted by the quotas within quotas which every school is forced to fill—children of old students, brothers and sisters of students currently in the school, children recommended by powerful politicians, bureaucrats, board members, etc., are all admitted irrespective of their standing on the so-called merit list. The admission procedure, as it stands today, is a process to select children from the “right” background. In fact a former Principal, of what is generally considered the best school in the country, once said, “Admission procedures are not meant to decide which child is to be admitted, since that has already been decided. They are meant to help keep the other children out”. So, in fact, all that the system seems to do is to deny admission to children who do not belong to this club, irrespective of their merit. Since it does not seem possible that the number of schools available will ever catch up with the demand for such schools, some process of elimination would have to be continued. The random system laid down by the Act, strange as it seems at first to most of us, takes care of the limitations of the current system. In YPS, Mohali, for some years now, admission to the nursery class, which is the point of our largest intake, has been done through a public draw of lots. There was, initially, some reservation on the part of sections of both parents and teachers. But over the years, it has been accepted by all as it has eliminated unfairness and the trauma of failure which came with the traditional system. I am happy that the Act will force us to adopt this procedure at the other levels of elementary education, too, where we do take a few admissions. There could be many other random methods adopted for admission like a system of first come, first served. The random procedure for admission is an extremely welcome change and a great step forward in introducing a greater degree of fairness and transparency in our school system. An eminent educationist and author, |
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Campus Notes TEACHERS of Guru Jambheshwar University have been on warpath seeking introduction of a five-day week system for all teaching departments since the university has already done so in the case of non-teaching employees. The GJU Teachers Association has been staging dharna daily to press this demand for several days. The GJUTA President, Dr Rajesh Lohchab, said the university had introduced the five-day week system for its non-teaching employees but teachers were required to work from Monday through Saturday. He said that no work was possible in the laboratories in the absence of laboratory attendants on Saturdays. Likewise, the computer and the library would not be functional in the absence of support staff. He maintained that no classes would be possible on Saturdays as there would be no support available in case of power failure. Similarly, should a projector or any other teaching aid develop a snag on Saturday, there would be no support available to set it right. Dr Lohchab pointed out that the other technical university in Haryana in Murthal had a five-day week system for all its employees. He saw no reason why GJU teachers should be singled out for the six-day week system. He urged the government to immediately look into the matter and introduce similar working days for all employees for the university. However, so far, the university authorities do not seem to be heeding to the GJUTA pleas. This is mainly because the university has been without a regular Vice-Chanceelor for several months now. Even before D.D.S. Sandhu was formally shifted to Kurukshetra University as Vice-Chancellor, he was holding charge of that university in addition to GJU. Important matters have been hanging fire. Video-conferencing
with farmers A group of students of CCS Haryana Agricultural University's College of Agriculture have taken up a unique initiative to establish video-conferencing links between farmers and university scientists. They have devised a good business and working model, too. The students have set up a joint committee with farmers. The committee will give job cards to five youths in every village who will have to buy a laptop with Internet connectivity. These youths will help farmers of their village to discuss their problems with HAU scientists through video-conferencing. In return, reputed seed, pesticide and fertiliser campanies will sell their produce to farmers of that village through these youths who will earn a commission on the sales. Pankaj Pahal, a student of the College of Agriculture, is the president of this committee. He said the committee would send 60 teams to cover all villages of Haryana. These teams would provide feedback from farmers on what they expected of HAU and the government. Besides, the teams would help establish video-conferencing links in each village. —
Contributed by Raman Mohan
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Admission
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I have on my table, two communications received during the last two weeks. One of them is a rather hysterical letter from a Principal running a school somewhere in the South, inviting me to join an association that is being formed to legally fight the implementation of the Right to Education Act and asking me to contribute towards the legal expenses. The other, more sober, is in the form of the minutes of a meeting of the Association of Non-aided Schools, Chandigarh region. This mentions, with ill-concealed glee, the petitions that have been filed against the implementation of the Act.
