Thursday, April 28, 2011

Educational Quality in Jeopardy

Educational Quality in Jeopardy

By Tomazinho Cardozo 
The future of man does not depend only on education but on the direction in which we take our education forward. In any illiterate society, the main concern of the authorities is to make the people literate.
At this stage the quality of education takes back seat. Number of literates is the only goal. As time passes, and the people acquire reading and writing skills, the question of giving them better education comes to the mind of policy makers. So more complicated teaching-learning process becomes a necessity. Accordingly, the educational policy makers introduce an appropriate curriculum that tries to fulfil the needs of the people. Goa has crossed both these stages.

Educationally, Goa is almost 90 per cent literate and this fact has been recognised nationally and internationally. At this crucial stage, our efforts should have been only to improve the quality of education. Unfortunately, I regret to say, we are introducing fresh measures in our examination system which are bound to arrest the qualitative growth of education in the state of Goa.
The fresh proposal of the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (GBSHSE) is to facilitate the passing standard ten and twelve students by allowing them to keep terms (ATKT) even if they fail in two subjects. As per the report in the local papers, this will be implemented from the academic year 2009-2010. This means that the students who appeared for GBSHSE’s March 2010 examinations for standard ten and twelve will be promoted even if they fail in two subjects. However, the concerned student will have to clear the subjects either in the supplementary examination or in the next Board examination.
In what way this measure is going to help the students is a big question. No doubt, if they pass these subjects in the supplementary or next board examination they will save one year, but at what cost? Soon after standard ten results there is a rush for admission to all streams of standard eleven. I have seen higher secondary schools hesitating to admit students with one ATKT. Such students had to run from pillar to post to get admission. Under no circumstances are they admitted in the science stream. Very rarely are they admitted in the commerce stream. It is mostly for arts or vocational courses that they have to opt for. Even when there were seats, these students were formally admitted at the last moment, when the school authorities realised that they were not going to get any more students without ATKTs.
If such a situation arises for one ATKT then what will be the fate of the students with two ATKTs? The mark sheet issued by the GBSHSE will have the remark “Needs Improvement”.  In other words the mark sheet will not say that the students with two ATKTs have passed. Thus the opportunity taking up a job post standard ten is eliminated. Students are normally stressed before the examination. However, I feel now that with this measure the post-result pressure on students will be more severe.
Second, is making passing standard ten and twelve examinations easy beneficial for growth of education in Goa? I am afraid not! Today our efforts should have been to improve the quality of teaching by imparting training to teachers and equipping them with modern teaching methodology. Our efforts should have been to identify weak students, not only in standard ten and twelve but right from standard five. They should have been handled accordingly so that their weaknesses were constantly taken care off till they acquire the required skills in that subject. Our efforts should have been to provide the required infrastructure to each and every school so that students did not only grow intellectually but also physically, emotionally and spiritually with the same dynamism. Such efforts on the part of concerned authorities would have, possibly, wiped out the trend of ATKTs and definitely would have helped in improving the quality of education in Goa.
Prior to this move of introducing two ATKTs, GBSHSE introduced a grading system for promoting students to higher classes in standards V, VI, VII, VIII and IX.  I was a member of the Board at that time. I had objected to the implementation of the system in all schools simultaneously because I felt that it will not improve the quality of education rather it would only help weaker students get promoted easily. My main contention was that teachers were not trained to evaluate internal assessments and hence it would lower the standard of education. I had proposed that the said grading system might be implemented in few ‘good’ schools as a test case and after observing its success or failure, the Board could then decide to introduce it in all other schools. As most of the Board members wanted that fewer students fail it decided otherwise. Today the heads of the schools and teachers complain that even very weak students pass in the examination because of the grading system.
First, the introduction of grading system and now the benefits of two ATKTs. This will only help increase the number of students getting promoted, and, regrettably, adversely affect the quality of education in this ‘educationally advanced’ state of Goa.

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