The article 'Why do government's quality education initiatives often flop?' of Dr Lalit Kishore, this blogger, which was earlier published in Meri News[1] on June 12, 2015 (now discontinued), is being reproduced because of its relevance.
"Everyone is concerned and talking about falling standards of education on the whole despite educational reforms being undertaken periodically. The World Day against Child Labour, being observed today, has brought the issue of quality education as a right of every learner.
Instead of observing the day through messages, posters, slogans, awareness rallies, human chains, competitions, etc., we must really debate about what quality of education is all about and how it can be achieved to mitigate child labour and make learning a life-long process.
"Problem with educational reforms in India is that the quality is viewed administratively in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of education through modernization of resources and better service conditions of educational functionaries. This has led to the failures of educational reforms and quality initiatives one after the other. Now, we must wake up to fact that the educational quality is not the outcome of money and resources but the quality of educational functionaries and the processes they follow to make learning happen," said Dr. R. Prakash the director of educational institute, who formerly had been the coordinator of an NGO-run resource institution for education project in Rajasthan.
According to a Jaipur-based teacher, Prabha Kishore, the concept of quality has come to education from the industry and has been popularized by management studies as if education were a commodity to be packaged and delivered with some sort of quality mark. This has led to externalization of education by the market forces, she added.
"Quality education lies in addressing the question: What kind of education we want for our children and how best to achieve it? A review of the present reality is needed and a vision of the transformed reality of education required first and foremost followed by turning the management of education into a support system rather than control system," she concluded.
I too feel that the gimmicks and patch-works like modernization of classrooms by smartboards; computers linked to LCD projectors with screen, use of V-SAT, course-specific software, distribution of free laptops or tablets, etc. are administrator-friendly resources for purchases and supplies and do not lead to quality education since at the core of education is the social process of unfolding the learning potentials of children full of diversity.
To me quality of education is the visioning education as it ought to be and mobilizing a supportive system to achieve it with empowered teachers. Moreover, insistence on similarity and uniformity in education is detrimental to learning since children are diverse. Quality teachers prepared and empowered for differentiated learning methods can ensure the education as it ought to be."
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