“The government doesn’t really require a policy. It requires a clear cut defined action plan because what’s missing in education is the action on the ground.”
Anil Swarup, former secretary for school education and literacy (Times of India, June 12)
“Many of the boards don’t have adequate staff, enough academic faculty to monitor their own procedures. Many of the state boards are actually in very poor shape as far as their academic infrastructure is concerned. Even the CBSE and ICSE operate as bureaucratic, mechanical set-ups. Unfortunately, the policy draft (NEP) doesn’t even look at this phenomenon of improving the institutional functioning of the boards.”
Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, on whether exams throttle India’s education system (The Hindu, June 14)
“Dislike the word ‘remedial’– as if there are deficits or deficiencies in some kids. Kids are all different and they all need different kinds of support for their learning.”
Uma Mahadevan, principal secretary, panchayat raj ministry in Karnataka (Twitter, June 28)
“‘Garmi, garibi aur gaon’ is how one newspaper summed up the cause of the current outbreak of children’s deaths, a death knell that tolls louder and is a glaring aberration in the prime minister’s ambition of transforming India into a $5-trillion economy by 2024.”
Sunil Sethi, well-known journalist, on the recent deaths of over 100 children suffering encephalitis in rural Muzaffarpur in Bihar (Business Standard, June 29)
“The NEP has suggested so many structures parallel to existing ones. The committee seems not to have learned lessons from past experiments… The NEP sets many lofty goals but is silent on capacity building at the grassroots level starting with school complexes. ”
Kitan Bhatty, senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi on the new National Education Policy 2019 draft (India Today, July 1)
