De-bureaucratise education

A committee of retired bureaucrats set up to help the government draft new education policy has suggested an IAS-like all-India examination for appointing teachers. The existing NET (National Eligibility Test) already serves the purpose. It sets a national benchmark for quality and there is scope for improvement, if required. Bureaucrats learn to say “yes sir”, students need encouragement to question received wisdom. Autonomy and ability of regional institutions to select teachers should be respected. The suggestions for greater regulation and having a quality audit merit consideration but the HRD Ministry may use regulation to push its saffron agenda.  While respecting the functional freedom of private schools, colleges and universities, certain regulatory measures can be mutually agreed upon with a credible dispute resolving authority in place. The committee, headed by former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian, has stressed the recall of the no-fail policy. It has reiterated what 15 states and many concerned citizens have already demanded. 

What needs to be done is to extend the State’s role from being a mere education provider to a facilitator. Giving needy students vouchers and a choice to choose their school is better than funding schools that don’t function. Technology can be used to spread quality education far and wide. The committee pleads for throwing the doors open to foreign universities. This should have been done two decades ago. Today online courses are available from reputed universities, even from Harvard, Stanford and MIT, enabling students to “sign up, view lectures and submit homework from anywhere in the world”, as Nandan Nilekani puts it. 

Good quality, videotaped lectures are also available for school students. There is “EkStep”, which offers the basic concepts of literacy and numeracy for children. Salman Khan’s Academy is an alternative model for school-level education. Teachers in this system do not teach but act as mentors and sort out students’ problems in understanding, if any. Nandan Nilekani has argued that it is possible to use technology to “teach the next generation” at an affordable cost. The Central and state governments need to change their set ideas and attitudes before changing education.