PREFACE
The invitation for public debate on the perspectives for new education policy as spelled out in the document "Challenge to Education: A Policy Perspective witnessed a spate of seminars/discussions by a large number of organisations throughout the length and breadth of the county. The responses came not only from the State Department of Education, universities, colleges and schools. National institute and professional organisations but also from a large number of teachers' and students" organisations and educational societies both big and small but what is more encouraging, a large number of non-educational organisations of varied type enthusiastically responded to the call, organised discussions on the document and sent their proceedings/viewpoints and recommendations to the Ministry of human Resourse Development for consideration while formulating the new education policy.*1
This monograph is based on an analysis of the responses received in the month of January, 1986. It includes only those organisations which ate directly inovled with the educational system. The non- educational organisations are covered in a separate volume. The organisations examinsed in this volume include, educational Institutions big and small, Sikshan Mandals of various States/Union Territories, a large number of All India State District level Organisations, Associations, and an equally large number of teachers/ students' associations, both national as well as regional. (A list of the Organisations/Associations covered in this volume is given in Appendix I.).
The statewise distribution of the Institutions/Organisations/ Associations given in Annexure Table I shows that while 9 of the Organisations/Associations are of all India level, four states had 10 or more organisational associations. These are Maharashtra, rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh. From Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and the Union Territory of Delhi, 8 Organisations/Associations
1. Two volumes based on the analysis of suggestions from different organisations both educational and non-educational, received till Dec.1985 have already been completed. While the first volume was based on An analysis of 138 organisations, in the second volume an analysis of responses from 106 organisations was undertaken.
have been included in this set of responses. Six states viz., Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura and five Union Territories, Andaman, Arunachal Pradesh, Dadra, & Nagar Haveli, Lakshdweep and Mizoram have not been represented at all in this set of proceedings. Punjab and Chandigarh also have just one each.
On the basis of statewise distribution of proceedings, one can say that, generally, the larger states have better representation while smaller states and Union Territories are not at all represented in this set, although it is quite possible that the representatives of some of these must have been included in some of the, National/Regional Organisations/Associations.
A content analysis of the documents sent by various organisations/ associations with respect to the stage/level/type of education with which they are mainly concerned is given in the Table 1.1
Level/Type of Education Frequency of Responses Percentage
Distribution
of Responses
Elementary 62 54.87
Secondary 41 36.28
Higher Educational 4 539.82
Technical and Vocational 19 16.81
Adult 23 20.35
General 16 354.87
The percentage are calculated on 113 which in the total number of responses.
Some of the proceedings contain discussions on more than one level of education. While Elementary Education has been covered by the largest number of organisations, secondary and higher education general also invited discussions from several organisations associations. Adult and technical professional education were discussed by comparatively smaller number of organisations. A large number of proceedings were general without, specific mention to any level/type of education. It may be observed that this is the general pattern of distribution of responses also revealed in several sets of analysis of responses both of organisations as-well as individual communications.
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The distribution of the proceedings of various organisations associations by the themes identified for analysis as giver, in Annexure II is given in Table 1.2*1.
Here also it may be noted that the usual pattern gets repeated i.e. the themes which invited the attention of largest number of organisations associations are "Planning and Management of Education", "Content & Curriculum" and "Teaching". These themes also received the highest number of responses in the analysis of individual letters as also in the analysis of Janvani Communications. It may be noted that the other themes in terms of concern such as `Language'. "Goals of Education" and "Financing of Education", did not convince so many responses in the individual communications as in the Organisational Proceedings. "Delinking" and "Access to higher Education" have not received as much attention of the organisations as one would have expected if the focus was the Challenge of Education Document. From this one can infer that the seminars and discussions, instead of getting focussed on the main issues raised in the `Challenge' document, have been organised keeping in view the particular focus of that organisation/associations or group.
A qualitative analysis of the responses under the Themes indentified for the analysis is presented in the following pages.
1. Areas included in each of the themes are given in the Volume "Restructuring Indian Education: Citizens' Perception Volume. II"
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Table 1.2 Theme-wise Distribution of Responses
Theme Frequency Percent Distribution
Planning and Management 71 62.83
Content and Curriculum 68 60.18
Teachers 67 59.29
Language 48 42.48
Goal 47 41.59
Finance 42 37.17
Vocationalisation 39 34.51
Education and Evaluation 37 32.74
Social justice 32 28.32
Infra Structural Facilities 28 24.78
Discipline and Politics 24 21.24
Delinking of Degrees from Jobs 23 20.35
Access to higher Education 20 17.70
Structure of Education 20 17.70
Malpractices in Education 8 7.08
Others including Adult Education 27 23.89
Percentage are calculated on 113 which is total number of responses.