Education News

Delhi Belated quality concern In a sharply worded indictment, the Planning Commission — the country’s apex policy-planning agency working directly under the prime minister — has castigated the Union human resource development ministry’s flagship Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (education for all) programme for failing to maintain quality norms. In a note to the Union cabinet the commission is reported to have bluntly stated that the SSA programme has failed to provide qualitatively acceptable education to a wide section of children in the country besides failing to address systemic reform. The commission is categorical that quality of education is of prime importance right from the elementary level, and has therefore suggested transformation of the nomenclature of SSA into ‘National Mission for Quality Elementary Education’. Meanwhile, the Union cabinet has approved the Centre-state funding ratio for the SSA programme upto 2012 and beyond. As per the revised approval, the Centre-state share will be in the ratio of 65:35 for 2007-08 and 2008-09; 60:40 for 2009-10; 55:45 for 2010-11 and 50:50 for 2011-12 and thereafter. However, for the eight north-eastern states, the ratio will be 90:10. This ratio revision has not gone down well with the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) which has been advocating Central legislation to action the long-pending Right to Education Bill and Central funding of elementary education. In a letter dated August 8 to the prime minister, NKC chairman, Sam Pitroda has urged the Centre to share the revenues of the Bharat Shiksha Kosh (the HRD ministry’s national education development fund) with state governments and to mobilise additional resources to fund SSA. On its part New Delhi too concedes that states have objected to linking SSA funding to implementation of the model Right to Education Bill circulated to the states last year. “The issue has been hanging in the balance because of internal sabotage. According to estimates 22 percent of members of Parliament run private schools and institutions. Naturally, they will never want a common school system as suggested by the model Bill to take off,” says Prof. Anil Sadgopal who together with Prof. Muchkund Dubey and Dr. M.M. Jha are on the panel of Bihar’s Common School System Commission. The Planning Commission too seems to be in favour of a common school system. “In the absence of good quality primary schools, children from better-off sections prefer private schools, the number of which is fast increasing across the country. SSA needs to ensure minimum norms and standards in schools accessible to all children as a matter of right. The programme also needs to address the issues of access, quality and equity holistically through a systematic approach. There is need to ensure that private schools also come up to the required minimum norms and standards,” says a Planning Comm-ission mandarin. Meanwhile at a NKC seminar on school education staged in Kolkata on August 26-28, issues regarding quality, access and lack of regulation of private schools, were raised. The needs of the urban poor, flexibility of state governments to develop their own need-based norms like…