With student suicides on the rise, the need for a full-time minister to handle school education is being felt now, more than ever.
The spate of suicides committed by school-going children has forced the government to review its education policy. But the bigger problem, which has gone unaddressed so far, is the appointment of a full-time Cabinet minister who will oversee school education. When the Cabinet was formed chief minister Ashok Chavan had said that a school education minister would soon be appointed. Two months later, the issue doesn’t seem to be top of the agenda.
The suicides have raised questions about why the government is ignoring school education as a serious issue. At present, the Congress-NCP government has 38 ministers, including CM Ashok Chavan and deputy CM Chhagan Bhujbal. The state can accommodate 42 ministers, which means there are still four Cabinet berths lying vacant.
The current composition of the government clearly shows that it considers the education ministry to be of secondary importance, giving it an ‘additional charge’ status. Currently, the school education portfolio is handled as an additional one by agriculture minister Balasaheb Thorat, who spends most of his time on complex agriculture-related problems.
On Friday, bowing to pressure from across political parties, Thorat convened a meeting of the education department. Thorat said, “We will review all incidents of student suicides. The government promises to expedite its campaign — Tanavmukti Pariksha Abhiyan (tension-free education system) — which was launched last year.” He added, “The government has asked all the district education officers to submit a survey report.”
The president of Shikshak Bharati, Kapil Patil, has written a letter to the education minister suggesting reforms in the school education system. He said, “Our focus should be to launch a three-pronged programme aimed at creating awareness among parents, counselling both parents and children and making education less percentage-oriented.”
“The education boards of Delhi, Bihar and Kerala have made fundamental changes in their education system. The age-old written examination has been partly replaced with field work and projects,” Patil added. He also suggested that there should be restrictions on the number of students in each class so as to enable teachers to attend to individual students.
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