Mudassar Khawaja
Education has been the only and primary source of enlightenment for humanity since ages. Since ancient Greece, the importance of formal education has developed multi fold. Reforms undertaken by successive civilisations has developed the education system and and new knowledge has poured in.
With the needs of ages, new developments has been introduced into the system and today we are enjoying this sophisticated and diverse fields in education that are serving our day to day requirements of life.
Over the time, reforms introduced by West has led to the development in science, technology, art and literature, social sciences, management. But oriental education has been subservient. Our reforms have not been imperative with the changing conditions and if we tried to follow the path trodden by West, the blueprint couldn’t not survive in the long when put to practice. The drawbacks with which our education system has been suffering is that in democratic system of governance reforms suggested by commissions couldn’t be implemented successfully. Governments always left back berth for education and used it for politically devised motives.
In our State, education got impetus after establishment of constitutional government. But the changing trends that has changed education system around the globe, remains at length for us. We are following centuries old education system that British left as ashes of colonialisation and this prevalent system is producing degree holders that are incompetent to adjust with modernisation.
Let’s compare and contrast reforms introduced by America and India in primary education. United States in 2001 introduced “No Child Left Behind Act” the government flagship programme for disadvantaged students. NCLB supports standard based education reforms bases on the premise that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals to improve individual outcomes in education. Each state was required to set standards and institute annual standard tests. If the school results were repeatedly poor, then steps were to be taken to improve the school through various remedial measures. A fifth year of consecutive failure results in planning to restructure the entire school with common options like closing the school, turning the school into a charter school, hiring a private company to run the school etc. The Act required states to provide “highly qualified” teachers to all students and existing teachers were also directed to meet the prescribed standards i.e. proficiency in specific subject matter knowledge coupled with pedagogical knowledge that is knowledge directing at how students learn.
After implementation of these reforms a report of National Assessment of Education Progress released in July 2005, showed improved students achievement in reading text and mathematics. More progress was made by nine year olds in reading in the last five years than in the previous 28 years combined. America’s 9 years old posted the best scores in reading (since 1971) and math (since 1973) in the history of report. America’s 13 years old earned the highest math scores the test ever recorded. Such was the drastic reforms that yielded fruitful results.
On the similar pattern, Government of India in 2000-01 introduced Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) aimed at universalisation of elementary education in a time bound manner. The policy was intended to enroll all students between the age group of 05-18, but hardly came down to standard essentially required to lay a strong foundation of children’s education. SSA like other centrally sponsored schemes followed a uniform “one size fit for all” which has been wholly inappropriate to meet the diverse requirements for Indian society. The policy couldn’t fetch the results as per the expectations made by the government.
An NGO Parhma’s Annual Status of Education shows that 47 per cent of class -V students can’t read Class -II text, while over 63 per cent of class 3rd students can’t substruct. A proportion of students in private schools has increased from 18.7 per cent to 25 per cent owing to the pathetic conditions for governmental counterpart. Therefore, SSA proved an inappropriate vehicle to meet the critical challenges of revitalising educational institutions and improved students learning.