New Delhi: The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will soon adopt government schools to improve the level of education across India.
The NCERT has its Regional Institutes of Education (RIEs) in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Mysuru (Karnataka), Shillong (Meghalaya), Ajmer (Rajasthan) and Bhubaneswar (Odisha), and the plan will first be implemented in these states.
The RIEs were set up for the qualitative improvement of school education through innovative pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes. They offer courses like B.Ed. and M.Ed.
The plan of action
NCERT director Hrushikesh Senapathy said: “As part of the initial plan, our teams from the RIEs will adopt schools in the vicinity of our institutes and from Tripura, since the state government requested us for collaboration.
“Our teachers will visit these schools regularly to interact with students and teachers, and find out what their problems are. If they need help like teaching assistance or resources, our teachers will provide them with that.”
Senapathy said once the initial experiment with village schools near the RIEs in successful, it will be implemented across the country.
“At a later stage, we will involve more teachers, academics and experts from institutes like the IITs and other technical institutes to be part of training and teaching the teachers in adopted schools,” he said.
The NCERT’s plan is part of the government’s initiative to improve quality of education in government schools, and bring the enrolment at par with or even greater than private schools.
Reports suggest that the enrolment of students in private schools has gone up in the last few years, and that of government schools has gone down. Data released in Parliament in July this year also suggested that more students are opting for private schools, even in poorer states.
National Curriculum Framework
The council also plans to gather information on various education indicators based on the pilot project, and use it to frame the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF).
The NCERT will soon make another change in the syllabus once the new National Education Policy (NEP) is finalised, and the new NCF is based on that.
“The inputs that we get from the initial survey of schools under the adoption programme will be used for NCF. It will be clear from the inputs what students actually need to learn and where they lag behind. All of this will be kept in mind while preparing the new syllabus,” Senapathy added.
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Good message
Policies may be introduced in education for quality updation. If the infrastructure in all the government schools is up to the mark, why should the people opt for Private schools? A surprise visit should be made periodically in the government schools across the country without any prior information to the officials, only then one can come to know the real
situation of the government schools. Infrastructure should be taken into consideration as a serious concern at first. Then quality and enrollment will rise automatically. Hope, this comment will have an effect.