Misadventures in education (Wrongly prepared legislations)

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Misadventures in education (Wrongly prepared legislations)

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• Two major education related initiatives: The Ministry of HRD sought public views on draft HECI bill which will replace the UGC, and the RTE amendments that will do away with no-detention policy and reintroduce testing for class V and VIII. All this is a response to the longstanding call for a shift in education policy.
• Problems with the UGC: The Yashpal Committee on Higher Education (2009) and the National Knowledge Commission Report (2006) made a case for bringing in a new regulator. But the draft HECI Bill brings in more centralisation and grant-giving power to the Ministry. It allows ministers to head the HECI which can be disastrous.
• Detention Policy: The RTI Act does not allow detention of students till they complete the elementary education (standard VIII). The amended RTI bill brings the provision to reintroduce detention of students in either class V, or in class VIII, or in both after they fail the tests which are now being introduced.
• Continuous Assessment: The RTE had envisioned a positive process of continuous assessment to help the students find their areas of poor performance, and to improve upon them. Having failed to provide that, the State is now once again relying on tests and detentions! This can lead to higher dropout rates.
• 9 years after RTE: India has achieved near-universalisation of enrolment of children at elementary levels. The no-detention policy has helped, but it may not by itself have helped the learning outcomes. Many other factors in RTE need to be taken care of.
• Low funds for SSA: The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is the driver for the RTE, but funds allocations to it have remained low.
• Patchworks, not solutions: So these legislations will prove to be patchworks, and not permanent solutions.
• Summary : Two of the major education sector legislations suffer from fundamental problems – the HECI bill, and the RTE amendments.

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