Quality education is the need of day
Ashwini Ahuja
May 20, 2007
In 2001 census, literacy rate at Indian school level was surveyed 76.85 percent for male and 54.16 percent for female. It was a rapid increase from 1951 when male: female ratio was just 27.16 and 8.86. Should we be proud of this progress? If we brag of our progress to someone, he might scoff at us. Reason: we remained totally failed to provide quality education in our schools. The condition of Punjab school education is worse than that of other adjoining states. More often than not, we talk of the times of Taxila and Nalanda when our Indian education system had enormous reputation in the world and pupils from far-off visited India to earn higher education.
In real, what is the need of today? What our contemporary situation demands? We should judiciously understand that the quality education is the basis of human resource of our country. Despite the significant improvements at the school level over the past sixty years, we still are lagging behind as compare to global education.
The statistics report of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) shows that our more than seventy percent population is literate. It means that our more than seventy percent population can only write their signatures and basic alphabets of their regional languages. It is not enough for our like one of the largest democratic country. We need to increase our quality education apart from quantitative literacy rate.
An expansion of infrastructure, increase in skilled teachers, curriculum development and personal care of students by reducing teacher: student ratio, we can develop quality education at school level. But it requires institution’s individual care. But teachers in government schools in Punjab are always on their trips of non-academic tasks such as BLO duties, aatta daal survey, economic survey, election duties etc. etc.
In the previous session, some school teachers could not find opportunity to attend their respective school for even more than five six months because of their booth level officer (BLO) duties. It is a crying shame that one way, our governments are spending enormous funds of millions under the scheme of SSA to improve the quality of education at school level. Other way, they stop teachers going to their respective schools. Might we improve our education system in Punjab this way?
Apart from government schools, teachers working in private schools too have failed to bring about the qualitative standard expected. Why? There might be two key reasons. First: choice of wrong action plan. Second: unplanned ways of working with the system and faulty teaching learning process. For private institutes, which are mushrooming and resultantly worsening of the situation, the increasing population is a matter of happiness. They admit the students in their classrooms more than the standard required and lower the standard of the education cultivating in mind the propose to fleece the parents of children.
Innovative technique of co-operative learning can help to improve the situation. With this method, we can tackle the enormous size of students in a classroom. It might be an effective tool to win over the malaise of school education. There is also a need to increase the percentage of national income for education. A sense of accountability among teachers ought to be revamped. Orientation programmes at individual level under the headship of university experts should be organized. Sarv Shiksha (SSA) seminars so far has proved futile lacking the absence subject experts and misuse of funds. With these types of incongruous seminars, teachers might ever update their knowledge.
It is our educational tragedy that in our schools- either private or government, we always prefer to do second work for the purpose of earning more. Most of our teachers treat their job of teaching as second rate. Many of them do not opt for this profession by their choice. They choose it by accident. How can they hundred percent dedicate for their unwanted profession?
Teaching- learning is a co-operative process. Without the full support from parents, a teacher is unable to provide quality education to their students. And without quality education, we can not expect all round development of our students.
In real, what is the need of today? What our contemporary situation demands? We should judiciously understand that the quality education is the basis of human resource of our country. Despite the significant improvements at the school level over the past sixty years, we still are lagging behind as compare to global education.
The statistics report of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) shows that our more than seventy percent population is literate. It means that our more than seventy percent population can only write their signatures and basic alphabets of their regional languages. It is not enough for our like one of the largest democratic country. We need to increase our quality education apart from quantitative literacy rate.
An expansion of infrastructure, increase in skilled teachers, curriculum development and personal care of students by reducing teacher: student ratio, we can develop quality education at school level. But it requires institution’s individual care. But teachers in government schools in Punjab are always on their trips of non-academic tasks such as BLO duties, aatta daal survey, economic survey, election duties etc. etc.
In the previous session, some school teachers could not find opportunity to attend their respective school for even more than five six months because of their booth level officer (BLO) duties. It is a crying shame that one way, our governments are spending enormous funds of millions under the scheme of SSA to improve the quality of education at school level. Other way, they stop teachers going to their respective schools. Might we improve our education system in Punjab this way?
Apart from government schools, teachers working in private schools too have failed to bring about the qualitative standard expected. Why? There might be two key reasons. First: choice of wrong action plan. Second: unplanned ways of working with the system and faulty teaching learning process. For private institutes, which are mushrooming and resultantly worsening of the situation, the increasing population is a matter of happiness. They admit the students in their classrooms more than the standard required and lower the standard of the education cultivating in mind the propose to fleece the parents of children.
Innovative technique of co-operative learning can help to improve the situation. With this method, we can tackle the enormous size of students in a classroom. It might be an effective tool to win over the malaise of school education. There is also a need to increase the percentage of national income for education. A sense of accountability among teachers ought to be revamped. Orientation programmes at individual level under the headship of university experts should be organized. Sarv Shiksha (SSA) seminars so far has proved futile lacking the absence subject experts and misuse of funds. With these types of incongruous seminars, teachers might ever update their knowledge.
It is our educational tragedy that in our schools- either private or government, we always prefer to do second work for the purpose of earning more. Most of our teachers treat their job of teaching as second rate. Many of them do not opt for this profession by their choice. They choose it by accident. How can they hundred percent dedicate for their unwanted profession?
Teaching- learning is a co-operative process. Without the full support from parents, a teacher is unable to provide quality education to their students. And without quality education, we can not expect all round development of our students.