Hunt For Quality

Hunt For Quality

FPJ BureauUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 02:31 PM IST
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It is extremely doubtful whether the All- India Council for Secondary Education would share the breezy optimism of Shri Prem Kirpal, Secretary to the Union Education Ministry, who inaugurated the Council’s third meeting. Glib as only the Planning Commission is capable of, Shri Kirpal gave the impression that the principal thing to be done in the direction of promoting secondary education was simply to upgrade a certain number of high schools into higher secondary schools and technically achieve the target fixed by the planners. Shri Kirpal is thus guilty of the same errors as the planners. The Planning Commission failed to take into consideration the various practical difficulties about upgrading high schools and clearly overlooked the fact that our existing higher secondary schools scarcely deserve to be so designated. What is most urgently required is not the upgrading of a few thousand high schools but serious and concerted efforts to improve  the standards in the existing higher secondary schools which are already overcrowded. The fact that must be faced squarely is that our secondary schools suffer a paucity of good teachers, particularly in mathematics, science and English. This scarcity has been fully analysed and correctives suggested by the All-India Council for Secondary Education quite some time ago. It is not known why the recommendations have not been implemented until now. Judging by Shri Kirpal’s speech it would appear that there is no immediate programme to correct the position. It would perhaps be a good idea to adopt a variation of the recommendation made by the conference of chairmen and secretaries of the Boards of Secondary Education which envisages a two-level examination system in subjects like English, mathematics and science: one level for those who discontinue studies after the secondary stage and the other for those who enter universities and technical colleges. Instead of leaving the choice to the students it must be made compulsory for those intending to enter universities and technical colleges to take the higher level examination.

January 16, 1961

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