Balwant Singh
Ours is a nation with rich natural resources and dynamism and a country with tremendous opportunities much more than any other progressive country of the world. Then why even after 72 years of attaining independence from foreign rule, a large chunk of population is still living below the poverty lines and there are instances when farmers, who work to meet the basic need of food for all, commit suicide and the youth who form the back bone of the nation are falling prey to drugs.The simple answer to the above questions is to bring about much needed improvement in our educational system, especially in Government funded institutions.
There are Government schools which are situated in rural belt but in the adjoining areas of the cities where the strength of teachers in some cases is more than number of students studying in the schools and in other inaccessible areas the availability of teachers is much less to cater for the teaching requirements of children. A total rationalisation of teachers is needed and rotation of teachers at regular intervals must be ensured by the concerned authorities.
The quality of teaching needs massive improvement and a passionate culture in the teaching profession must prevail. Teaching is a profession which make visionaries who contribute in the nation building and bring about a progressive change. Organising the training of teachers at regular intervals to make them abreast with the ever emerging technology will meet the requirement of modern techniques of teaching. The basic computer infrastructure must be build up in each school and computers supplied to the school must be utilised for making well equipped computer labs to ensure computer literacy among the students right from beginning. This is the computer age and basics of the computers has to be taught to the students at primary level so that they can handle computers confidently once they reach their secondary classes.
The computer aided learning is almost missing from the Government schools especially in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir where as per latest NITI Aayog’s report on school education quality index, there are only 4 percent of such secondary schools where CAL has been implemented. As per right to education act norms, each school should have a library with newspapers, magazines and subject specific books available for all students but in the UT of J and K only 64 percent of the elementary schools are having such facility. The Computer laboratories which are almost missing at the level of primary and the middle schools are available only in approx 38 percent of the schools at the secondary level and this percentage is also on the decline.The concerned authorities must pay immediate heed to this very important aspect.
In the sequence next comes the curriculum which has to be covered up in an organised manner keeping in mind that beside fast learners there are also the slow learners in every class and they need to be taken care of by giving special attention to maintain their pace with whole of the class. If not taken care of, these slow learners tend to give up thinking that it is beyond their control to carry on with the studies and they tend to drop out or attend school for the sake of attending only and ultimately fail once they appear in their board examination.
Most of the children studying in Government schools generally come from underprivileged families and there exists a kind of lackadaisical attitude at various levels. To overcome the drawback, a system must be put in place by the authorities concerned to encourage the people from upper strata of the society to send their children to Government schools to bring about a positive change in the teaching culture. Organizing of the Parents-Teachers meets at regular intervals and mandatorily attending of the same by the either side will definitely improve upon the studies and overall personality development of a child. Following of a model code of conduct at each level of teaching will definitely ensure better product from government schools to compete and contribute for the society. Ethical approach by those responsible to shape up the future of a child will go a long way to ensure his bright future. Privileges such as child care leave or any other type of leave must be availed with utmost care to ensure that studies of their students are not harmed at any point of time.
The heads of Government schools should project the requirements to the concerned authorities to build requisite infrastructure to provide state of the art teaching facilities to the students. It must always be kept in mind that these children studying in Government schools have to compete in future with students who pass out from the urban situated public schools with much better infrastructure and all other teaching facilities.
The extra cocurricular activities must also be the thrust area to provide an opportunity to the child to exploit his hidden talent and shine in the area of his interest. A child who excels in games and sports should be encouraged both by parents as well as teachers to exploit his talent and do well in games and sports and thrust area should not be only the academics. A special derive should be launched at the School level to explore the hidden talent in the child to excel in games and sports. The existing games and sports infrastructure of the school should be improved and nearest available playgrounds and sports connected facilities should be requisitioned to conduct interschool tournaments and all games and sports should be given equal importance and not only the game of cricket.
Highlighting the much needed improvements in the field of education will be like sailing through the wide spread deep sea but continuous improvements in the educational sector will definitely ensure better product especially from Government schools situated elsewhere in rural areas and also to ensure constitutional equality leading to a balanced development of the county.
(The author is Colonel (Retd)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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