Principals from prominent city schools discuss the Union HRD minister's proposals to improve school education, particularly his plan to do away with the std X board exams.
Ranjona Banerji: Hi and welcome to DNA YA! Conversations. Education minister Kapil Sibal has come up with some interesting proposals for schools to think about. The CBSE has already done away with the board exams. Would other boards like to follow suit? What about a national curriculum, if not one board?
Aditi Banerji, vice-principal, St Gregorios High School: One board, one curriculum, definitely. But if we are thinking of scrapping exams at the Std X level then it cannot be limited to one board. The intent is to bring down stress levels, allow children to go into Std XI with a happy outlook. But you just cannot have it with one board; that leaves the others nowhere. Also, the children in schools which do not go up to Std XII will have to be accommodated.
T Kalathinathan, principal, Atomic Energy Central School 2: I have to agree. We should go for one board, one curriculum. Differences are bound to happen if we operate too many boards at the same time and the CBSE introduces something new. Certainly there are some drawbacks. But if it is introduced universally in all sections of the country, it will work well. We can get the whole nation, Kashmir to Kanyakumari, together using this system.
Hemali Gada, principal, Hemali's Edupark, Malad: The stress levels that parents have when their children are really small, about whether to put them in SSC or ICSE or IGCSE or any other board, are really high. Young parents are very confused. So having a universal board will be good.
Neha Chheda, head of department, Shishuvan: Yeah, definitely, I think one board seems an ideal situation. I think politics and education are really mixed up.If you look at it, nothing really functions from the Centre directly -- it is all state-driven in our country. There is more than meets the eye when it comes to a single board. Of course, the benefits, whatever we have spoken of, are there with one board, but there is still a lot of debate left.
Madan Rao, principal, Atomic Energy Central School 1: Logically, it has to be one board. Right now, topics are completely different across boards, across states. But before implementing anything there should be awareness and opinion. Education being a state subject, we cannot ignore the states. Naturally, the politicians will have a stake, unfortunately, ignoring the children, parents, administrators, and educationists. But one board is definitely a way towards progress. But for that, a lot of debate has to take place and documents have to be prepared with consent from all the stakeholders involved.
AK Hazra, principal, Atomic Energy Central School 5: Recently, I was in England to see what type of schools and education system they have. It was a great surprise to me that the last Class X exam they conducted was in 1964. I strongly believe that the Class X exam is not for children. It is for parents. The kind of pressure they create in a child's mind, creativity and imagination are lost. At the school level generally, we deal with the concepts. And the concepts cannot vary from region to region. Addition taught in Kanyakumari is the same as addition taught in Kashmir. So I fully endorse the policy of one board and one curriculum.
Rekha Singh, principal, Presidency School: Doing away with the Std X exams seems like the answer to all of us. But every school has its own idea of judging or assessing a child. So when you say you are going to do away with the Std X board examination, how will the child be assessed? By his own school's results? How could you actually assess the results of a school? The CBSE has the idea of continuous assessment throughout the year and then they are going to go to grade 11 and grade 12. So who is going to judge that? What is going to be the scale? A lot of homework is required.
Kishore Pillai, principal, RIMS International School & Junior College: I do not stand for a single board system because it is going to be very difficult. Education is a state subject. So there are going to be a lot of issues before we reach a conclusion. But we need some basic policies in place which define education, which we don't have at the moment. There is a quality in the curriculum framework, but not all boards that come into India follow that framework. So I think if the government focuses more on the framework of education and all the boards follow the course curriculum in the manner that they are asked to, it will make a lot of difference. It is not the boards that are a hindrance to a child's education system; it is the manner in which a board performs or manages itself that is the problem.
Moreover, who monitors the quality of education? A big question. We have inspectors who take charge of state schools who themselves have never been teachers. In the UK, there is a very clear framework of education and you develop yourselves within that. You come up with a lot of innovations and that keeps your board alive and competitive. I feel that's how it should be.
Zeenat Bhojabhoy, vice-principal, Jamnabai Narsee School: I have put down some questions. One board, one curriculum, yes, but how? Who are the policy-makers? Are they classroom teachers? No, not at all. Are we looking at both, the urban and the rural setup? There is no one here from the rural setup. They are in a miserable condition, right from the understaffed scenario to the mid-day meals to no textbooks, no school, and no teachers. If we are looking at the future prospects of young adults of the entire country, then best practices of all curricula should be adopted and a curriculum should be designed accordingly.
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