DNA Edit: Education reforms

One can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from students across India after HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar declared that his ministry plans on cutting the NCERT syllabus to half for classes I-XII.  However, this relief won’t be a long-lived one. Even if one takes away half the burden of the syllabus, the all-pervasive vice grip of competitive exams hasn’t been loosened one bit. 

Unlike the NCERT, authorities conducting competitive exams for engineering, medicine, law, chartered accountancy and other professional courses are not giving their examinees a hall pass, permitting them to get off with a lighter load. Lakhs of students will still continue to burn the midnight oil, brave the most overwhelming of odds and struggle to eke out a career for themselves in times of such fervent hyper-competition. For them, the relief of cutting the syllabus is, at best, a consolation with little substance. Sure, there is no denying that after this move, the load emanating from school boards would reduce, however, there will be nary a dent to marks-oriented, rote-learning, assembly line system of education that the government wants to target. In his book ‘Exam Warriors’, PM Modi has stressed on treating exams as festivals that test the student’s preparation and not the student himself. This is a lofty ideal that could go unmet. 

The Indian education system is notorious for reducing students to nothing but a bundle of nerves wound tightly together by the unmet aspirations and overblown expectations of their parents. To change the paradigm in this domain, a deeper shift has to be made in the endgame that the ministry is envisioning for the children of the country. The stress will have to be on building adults who are not solely focused on becoming employable but ones that have an independent, rational mind informed with a liberal and scientific temper. For this to happen, avenues of higher and premier learning like the IITs and IIMs will need to reorient themselves to admitting students who have well-groomed, all-round personalities rather than a uni-polar identity of being book-smart. 

Only once the higher levels change their perspectives on the kind of students that they let in through their hallowed corridors, will the change start seeping to the lower levels. Meanwhile, other declarations by Javadekar will be instrumental in addressing the flaws embedded in the existing educational edifice. After the annual ASER report was released in January, the ministry once again found itself in an unenviable position. As per the report, one-fourth of the students in class VIII cannot read a class II level textbook, while half of them cannot solve simple division problems. Javadekar is now looking to redress this sorry state of affairs by introducing exams at the level of the 5th and the 8th standard. This is most welcome as it will introduce an element of accountability in the system. Additionally, the HRD ministry is charging full speed ahead with training teachers for skills upgradation. In one stroke, this move is helping generate employment as well as impart education.