Education: More hits than misses

Tribune News Service

Shimla, December 9

The education sector has seen a flurry of decisions in the first year of the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu government. It started with the controversial decision to shut down hundreds of schools, a majority of which were opened or upgraded by the previous BJP government at the fag end of its term. However, it is ending the year with pragmatic decisions like resource-sharing among schools and sending teachers on the first-ever foreign exposure tour.

In between, the government took some other major decisions like the introduction of English as a medium of instruction in all government schools from the next academic session, identifying sites for building the promised Rajiv Gandhi Model Day Boarding Schools, tweaking the contentious teachers’ transfer rules and giving approval for filling around 6,000 posts. Besides, another significant decision was the introduction of new-age courses in technical institutes like ITIs, polytechnic colleges and engineering colleges.

As per the Annual Status of Education Report, which came out just a month after the Congress came to power in December last year, the learning abilities of schoolchildren had taken a massive beating in the state during the Covid years. The decline in reading abilities was among the highest in the country; the drop in basic arithmetic was also quite significant. Also, the state had slipped in the performance grading index. Besides, the government claimed that there was a shortage of around 12,000 teachers, with 3,145 schools running with just one teacher and 455 functioning without any teacher. Moreover, several schools had zero or negligible enrolment. The situation didn’t look too good, and the government needed to act and take some tough decisions. It started by shutting down schools having negligible enrolment, cancelling hundreds of deputations sought for personal convenience, and then sanctioning around 6,000 posts to address the overall shortage of teacher. The other major challenge is people preferring private schools over government schools, and continual migration from government schools to private schools. As per the UDISE report, private schools, which are just around 15 per cent of the total number of schools, have around 38 per cent of the total enrolment, while government schools (85 per cent of the total number) have just around 60 per cent enrolment. Officials feel the introduction of English as a medium of instruction and allowing schools to choose their own uniform would help in checking exodus to private schools.

Also, the government’s budgetary announcement to open Rajiv Gandhi Government Model Day-Boarding School in every Assembly constituency would also help on this front. These schools will have state-of-the-art indoor and outdoor facilities. In the first phase, sites for 18 schools have been identified.

The government needs to formulate a fair and transparent transfer policy in the department. The previous government had also tried to formulate the transfer policy, but developed cold feet at the last minute.

The other major issue that require the government attention is the need to regulate fee and the admission process of private schools.

Flurry of decisions

The government took some major decisions like the introduction of English as a medium of instruction in all government schools from the next academic session, identifying sites for building Rajiv Gandhi Model Day Boarding Schools, tweaking contentious teachers’ transfer rules and giving approval for filling around 6,000 posts

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