The Human Resource Development
(HRD) has listed a comprehensive roster of gaps in the current system. But on
possible solutions, the input document seems reluctant to push the envelope.
While it breaks new ground in highlighting the need for robust and universal
pre-school education or making learning outcomes the core of school
performance, it sticks to more traditional prescriptions on teachers.
The ministry recognizes the importance of teachers but falls short of
identifying policies that would realize that importance in practice. Teachers
can play a transformational role when the bulk of the school going population
come from homes with low educational achievements. Teachers must be not just
proficient but also accountable.
It is practically impossible for a distant education department in the
state capital to ensure accountability, even with a phalanx of inspectors and
supporting bureaucracy.
The management committees of schools must hire teachers and have
disciplinary control over them.
It will improve accountability, do away with transfer politics and
ensure that every school has the requisite number of teachers. School
administrators, working with the management committee, are best placed to
determine the kind of teachers required. This calls for a process of political
and financial devolution to the lowest tier of government and constant public
engagement to ensure that local governance does not degenerate into local
harassment.
To identify the local complement and to let school governance work with
both autonomy and accountability, we need functional democracy as well. The
input document makes many good interventions relating to curriculum, providing
for a national core to be complemented with diverse local inputs.
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