UPSC Articles
EDUCATION / GOVERNANCE
Topic: General Studies 2:
- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Education
New Educational Policy: Ignores the role of Parents
Context: The NEP has been received with broad praise.
The goal of universalisation of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) and the focus on achieving universal foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) is especially laudable.
Challenges ahead for NEP
- Translating policy into action on the ground at scale
- This is challenging because most of the policy suggestions are not new – several state governments have been trying hard to implement such reforms
- However, the lack of consistent political will and the slow pace of adopting emerging technologies have stymied these efforts.
- Parents are not involved
- Parents, from less-privileged backgrounds find it difficult to understand the value of the current reforms such as curriculum overhaul, teacher-training or activity-based learning in schools
- Parents are only mentioned 25 times, as compared to 221 mentions for teachers
- Poor Perception of Public Schools due to technological backwardness
- Private schools take huge pains to attract their most critical constituency — parents — through fancy brochures or computer labs.
- Public educators tend to be poor publicists.
- As a result, the public-school system has lost the perception battle to the private system.
- Lack of Political Incentives & Visibility
- There is opaqueness of progress of Child’s learning levels and lack of value realisation by the constituents (Parents)
- This is why politicians across the spectrum have, in turn, not paid attention to education, as compared to other sectors such as infrastructure and skills training.
- As a result, Education reform attempts come and go, based on the whims and fancies of officials and their unpredictable tenures.
Way Ahead
- Regular Interactions with Parents: Models should be designed to include teachers as key facilitators for parent interactions. This increases community respect for teachers and also makes parents as stakeholders in Child’s educational progress
- Leveraging technology: Tech- and media-enabled models of leveraging government infrastructure to build parental aspiration, information gateways and, social motivation
- Increase Political Incentive: We need initiatives and technology that achieve both educational and political success, as was the case with the midday meal scheme. The initiatives must create a virtuous cycle of governments pulling parents along and vice versa
Conclusion
Governments will do the hard slog only if their efforts are visible and impressive to parents, a key voting bloc
Connecting the dots:
- Mid Day Meal Scheme
- Right to Education
