दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

Let the country celebrate. Education is a fundamental right of every child from today. Education will be free and compulsory too. The Prime Minister will address the nation on this day. I wish all the chief ministers would have also addressed the people of their state in their languages and appealed them to participate to make it effective.

It will be binding on the part of local and State Governments to ensure that all children in the six to 14 years age group get schooling. Almost 22 crore children fall under this age group. According to India’s Education for All Mid-Decade Assessment, in just five years between 2000 and 2005, the country increased primary school enrollment by 13.7 per cent overall and by 19.8 per cent for girls, reaching close to universal enrollment in Grade 1. However, still one in four children in 2005 left school before reaching Grade 5 and almost half before reaching Grade 8. The litmus test will be to bring the drop out to zero level.

Private educational institutions will have to reserve 25 per cent seats for children from weaker sections.

Expectations are high. It expects to improve the quality of education. It expects teachers to improve.

It is now mandatory for every single school to acquire a certificate of recognition after complying with norms and standards specified in the act. A school will function for five-six hours a day, and will have at least one teacher for every 30 children. (I strongly opine that for a good education, the number of teachers must be at least double) The children have access to textbooks and learning material, and will also get a mid-day meal.

I dream a positive transformation in the schools of the villages like Pipra, Madhukarpur, and Bodarhi and lakhs others in different villages of India. I do also hope that the education in the government schools at Noida’s integrated villages such as Agahpur, Morna, Nithari and Hosiarpur will gradually improve and will be similar to that of its many private schools.

But as expected, unless the parents appreciate the role of education and demand it from the teachers and the government, the act will not mean much. Further, many things must get added to the activities of these schools with limited means to make the act successful. The people, agencies, and local bodies must participate by getting the school premises protected, by getting a library and creativity centre built in the premises, and arranging a regular health checks through volunteer doctors. Let there be more and more competitions organized between the schools of a locality. Will the rich private schools allow the students of the government schools to participate in the sports and other extracurricular activities?

It requires a change of mindset. Unfortunately, there still remain many barriers to be crossed. Let the Kasis and Devis (of NDTV-Imagine) be not stopped from getting education and all those doing it must be behind bars.

Can we expect a 100 % educated nation soon or in a generation?

While speaking in the ‘Session on Human Resources: The Future of Education’ in ‘India Today Conclave 2010’, Kapil Sibal had a technical solution to get over the problem of the shortage of teachers in rural schools. According to Mr. Sibal, ‘the broadband facility will happen in the next three years and the last mile connectivity through wireless too that can ensure lots of education programmes to reach children, even without teachers, if the need arises.’

Cisco’s chairman John Chambers also propounded the idea. Chambers conceived that a virtual learning revolution could take education to every Indian for a dollar a month. Chambers cautioned, “Don’t model the education system on the past, model for where it is going.”

Is it only a wishful thinking?

Some private company such as Educomp Solutions instead of setting up of the profitable business of coaching institutes for facilitating the entrance in IITs and IIMs must get into the business of providing the teaching material with help of IITs for all the private engineering colleges of the country that really lack good teachers.

I wish Kapil Sibal encourages and ensures the use of technologies first and almost immediately in all ready running private professional colleges that can be possible with a little thrust from the government.

Unfortunately, Kapil Sibal wants to do many things and bring about the transformation of the education system and sector of India. Mr. Sibal must focus on some and get them executed. And the use of technology in thousands of private engineering colleges is that one requires Mr. Sibal’s personal attention.

As reported, IITs have already readied the courses of many branches of engineering videoed that can be used for simultaneous teaching in many locations. Why IITs can’t be given the responsibility of the distance teaching in thousands of private engineering colleges of the country. It will bring certain amount of equity in accessibility of knowledge of engineering subjects.

Will Sibal be able to concentrate on the execution of this aspect of improving the quality standard of teaching from the private engineering colleges?

According to Mr. Sibal, India will need at least 800 more universities and another 35,000 colleges in the next ten years to increase the percentage of students going for higher education from the present 12.4% in the country to 30%. Will it not be prudent to work on improving the quality of the education on priority that can be done through technology for the India’s 480 universities and about 22,000 colleges today? Many entrepreneurs have already started taking steps. for example, iProf is one, which is a 7 inch touch screen tablet, that comes bundled with content from premier education institutes and has been launched at a price of INR.14900/- . And the application of technologies in education sector will expand fast in coming years.

I don’t know why but I have my own reason of extreme excitement over the Presidency University Act passed by West Bengal assembly recently. The institute originally founded as Hindoo College in 1817 and renamed as Presidency College in 1855, is getting an upgradation as University. I am among that huge lot of living alumni of Presidency College who can’t excuse the left government that did everything to pull down the College from its top position to a mediocre level. Many parents shied and eminent teachers deserted because of excessive government intervention. Fortunately, the left failed. Presidency College continued to retain its unique place.

Unfortunately, I don’t know why Presidency College or now Presidency University, the institute of excellence in Kolkata can’t employ the best teachers from all over the country and open it for the competitive admission for students from all over the country. I wish the states and the centre would have agreed to make all the best colleges in different capital cities as cosmopolitan as IITs and IIMs. It would have certainly enhanced its brand.

Presidency College with limited land space to grow will have to go out of the present location or will have to take the route of extension centres in different location. But I dream the birth of the innovation university with the new transformation of Presidency College to Presidency University. Can it have a separate college of each science subject, such as one College of Physics with offering of courses providing courses for honours bachelor degree to conducting post doctoral researches? Similar separate colleges can come up for different subjects, even of vernacular or foreign languages and other subjects in humanities. I am ready to share and expand my proposal with any educationist who can agree with me. Can the media help me in selling the idea of re-engineering of this new type of university?

However, the old building of the college with a history of its own and the Eden Hindu Hostel must be declared as heritage building and maintained for the posterity.

But I doubt if the new university can get the necessary autonomy and freedom to raise fund and decide and administer every academic aspect of educational courses. Otherwise, the Presidency University will remain under the state government and ruling political party that carry on its own political agenda.

I suggest the Presidency University to get benefited through all those who had been associated with this great old institute anytime in life as student or faculty. But still initiative will remain with those who shall be running its administration. Who shall be bringing the change?

Perhaps one of the best presentations in India Today’s Conclave 2010 was from Mr. Kapil Sibal, the lawyer by profession but who appears to present himself as the best education reformist India ever got. (Those interested must click for the speech transcript in box)

However, I am hardly convinced about the possibility of speedy implementation of Kapil’s wishes to provide rightful access to every kid of the country to quality education. India still lives in rural India. At least 60 percent of the children in age up to 14 years go to the rural schools that are nothing but few rooms of all specifications with no facilities built in a desolate location outside the villages.

Kapil wishes to ensure quality through infrastructure by setting out minimum infrastructural laws–pupils to teacher ratio. A school ‘should have a playing field, and a classroom of certain dimensions. In the event of particular institutions not having so, a three-year period will be given to the institution to arrange for it. And comply with the norms under the Act.’ It appears to be an impossible task for the state government or the panchayats that are expected to play a definitive role in school administration.

Unfortunately, the rural schools never followed any norms of building design and architecture. Overall condition of schools on average is just pitiable.

I wish each state decides few conceptual designs and specifications for the primary, and secondary schools. I also suggest that all rural secondary school must integrate a skill training wing. Every student must compulsorily learn at least one skill. But the first important task is to prepare an architecturally sound but low cost building design with clear specifications and drawings of various types of school campus to be built. The design must be aesthetic matching with the rural environment preferably modular, so that the building work can be taken up in phases as the school grows in scale and activities. The infrastructure must include creativity centres, laboratories for language and mathematics with computers and other digital gadgets. At some stage a meeting hall may come up. But the campus must have a playground and also a gardening corner where children can grow plants and flowers. It should also have provision for residence of a caretaker teacher and a guard who should be responsible for the buildings and other assets in the campus.

How will it be excuted? There is only one way to make this happen. The main initiative must come from panchayats and the governing body that must be headed by a retired qualified person with missionary zeal selected by the villagers through consensus. The panchayat must be free to use local labour under NAREGA to cut the cost of building. As first task, the existing school must be connected with the village with 24×7 lighted metalled road with plantation on both sides. The school should be allowed to take donations from the alumni or local donors to improve the facilities.

In short, the rural school campus must grow as a showpiece of the community in cluster with panchayat bhawan, knowledge centre or kiosk that is being planned by the government, and the healthcare centre in proximity rather than having each of them in separate locations as is the practice now at least in Bihar.

I don’t know how Mr. Sibal dreams of broadband and last mile connectivity to compliment the shortage of good teachers, when 90 percent of the rural schools are vulnerable for pilferage of even the doors and windows and when the solar plant installed on a panchayat bhawan is taken away by thieves in the night, and when the schools are used by thieves for planning their next victims in night or for celebrating the success of a big prey or to accommodate the marriage party in summer for afternoon break after a long journey to its destination.

Majority of the rural schools at least in Bihar, as much as I know, are in real bad shape with not even a single regular teacher to manage the affairs there. In some places, even the good high schools that I knew years ago hardly have few students with very few teachers with little qualification and no motivation for teaching.

How will Kapil Sibal’s dream get realized? How will the country growth be sustained without good education for the majority of the population?