SECTION C:
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
 

The nationwide announcement by the Prime Minister to formulate the New Education Policy has drawn the attention of people from every section a and all the corner of the country. Thousands of Indian people have responded to the announcement and have sent their suggestions to be incorporated in the new educational policy. While some have written directly to the Prime Minister or to the Education Minister, a large number have responded to the appeal of 'Janvani' made by the Delhi Doordarshan Kendra. These letters include statement of various problem in education, querries, regarding various educational issues and also comments and suggestions. This paper is based on the analysis of these letters received by Delhi Doordarshan Kendra and sent to NIEPA through the Ministry of Education. The letters have come from different parts of the country and from people of different status. Total number of letter received as part of 'Janvani' programme and analysed by NIEPA number 2255 in all.

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Design of analysis was finalised on the basis of the study of about 100 letters and insights gained through the analysis of about 1000 letters. It was decided to categorise the people, who have written, into nine broad groups which are "Teachers and Educational Administrators, 'Students' Professionals outside Educational, "Administrators outside Education', 'Businessmen' 'Servicemen', 'Unemployed', 'Parents' and others (including those who did not mention their profession). Two categories that did not (figure in this correspondence are 'Politician' and Journalists. While two new categories are 'Parents' and 'Unemployed', Apart from this group-wise distribution of respondents, a state-wise classification of respon- dents has also been done which gives an idea of representation of different States and Union Territories in the responses.

In order to better comprehend the contents of letter, it was decided to categorise the issues in fifteen theme - categories, In the earlier analysis we had analysed only 10 themes. Five new themes added to these analysis are access to higher Education, vocationalisation and job oriented

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education', 'Discipline', 'corruption and Politics' and 'Infrastructural facilities'. Since different people had mentioned their concern with different levels or stages of education, the responses have also been classified on the basis of levels of education viz. Elementary, Secondary/High Secondary, Higher Education, Professional/Technical, Adult and Non-formal Education and General.

Responses have come from all the twenty-two states and six Union Territories. In terms of State-wise representation this correspondence is more representative than the one analysed earlier. Only three Union Territories of Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Lakshadweep and Mizoram did not figure in this correspondence. The largest number of letters have come from Uttar Pradesh which accounts for 18.14 percent of the total responses while minimum representation is from Manipur and Sikkim as only one letter has come from each of the two States. Maharashtra is second in terms of percentage of respondents (15.88 percent) Union Territory of Delhi and Madhya Pradesh account each for about 12 percent of respondents. Hindi speaking states are generally having good representation in the communications

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while eastern and southern region are not so well represented. The pattern of Statewise responses broadly resembles the earlier communication, though one can say that, it is more distributed.

As far as the group-wise representation of respondents is concerned about 47.5 percent of respondents have either not mentioned their profession or their profession could not be identified. The biggest category is that of 'Students' accounting for about 20.5% of the total respondents. The group of 'Teachers and Educational Administrators' follows the category of students. 'Professionals outside Education' and 'Servicemen' are also meaningfully representated, while representation of other groups is nominal. In our earlier analysis students constituted only about 5 percent of total respondents. In that analysis the largest number of responses had come from the 'Teachers and Educational Administrators' which out- numbered all other categories combined together,

Themewise 'Planning & Management' appeared to be the issue of major concern to the respondents. The theme of 'Content and Curriculum' has been

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mentioned by ;about one third of respondents and it is second highest after 'Planning and Management'. About one fourth of the respondents have mentioned about-the issue of 'Teachers' which is followed by the theme 'Corruption and Politics', 'Structure of Education' and 'Evaluation and Examination', The theme 'Access to Higher Education' and 'Delinking Degrees from Jobs' have been given very low response. It may be noted that in the earlier analysis the first three themes were 'Content and Curriculum', 'Planning and Management' and 'Goals of Education'. In fact 'Content and Curriculum.' drew a very large number of responses in that analysis. This can be explained to the background of the persons who sent the earlier letters and those who wrote for 'Janvani', people writing for the 'Janvani' seem to be more representative of common men. Hence, 'Goals' are either not so much a matter of concern to them or they are not in a position to conceptualise the issue.

The levelwise distribution of responses show that 44,3 percent responses are of those who have not written about any specific stage of education and their comments are general. After the 'General'

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category highest number of responses are related to the 'Secondary/Higher secondary' level of education by 'Higher Education' level. Only 18 percent responses are related to the 'Elementary' level of education while nearly 9 percent responses are concerned with the "Professional/Technical Education". The representation of the responses on 'Adult end Non-formal Education' is very nominal. In the earlier communication Elementary Education drew as many responses as Higher Secondary, in fact, a little more, "Higher Education", in fact, drew much less number of responses in the earlier communication. This may be again explained to the category of persons responding. In this communication 'Student' category mostly belongs to Higher Education. "Technical and Professional' and 'Adult and Non-formal' have not drawn any significant number of responses in either of the set of communications.

A detailed qualitative analysis of responses has already been given in the last section under various themes. From the qualitative analysis of the correspondence it is easy to discern the broad trends.

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First of all, it important note that the major emphasis in the communication is on implementation of education policy and distortions which are apparent in the process of implementation. Whether a person is writing about curriculum or content# evaluation or examination, language policy or equity, his basic concern is with implementation. There are only very few suggestions which have implications for broad policy formulation. These are, however, important and need to be highlighted.

One issue that emerges again and again is "removal of disparities" among different types of schools; among different groups of population, and between rural and urban area. For the purpose of removing disparities a uniform. pattern of education. uniform structure, uniform curriculum$ uniform system of evaluation, uniformity in facilities in different types of school whether public or private and uniformity in pay scale of teachers has been suggested. Uniformity is suggested not only as a means to remove disparities but also for helping the mobility of people from one part of country to another part. It may, however, be noticed that no one has suggested uniformity on educational grounds

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Another area which has received attention of the group is making education relevant to the needs of the people and relating it to employment, Changes in curricula, vocationalisation and work oriented education and delinking degrees from the jobs are the various ways suggested to make the education useful to individual and the country.

Pivotal role of teachers in improving the quality of education has been mentioned by a large number of respondents. Major suggestion in this respect is to attract able persons to this profess- ion by giving them better salary and other perks and provision for vertical mobility.

One may have a very good policy but It is not possible to achieve the desired goals until corruption and nepotism prevail similarly undue political interference affects the entire educational process. Respondents of the communication have shown their awareness and a very percentage of them have categorically asked what the government proposes to do in this regard. Corruption in examination and corrupt. Practices among the teachers have been focussed more than anything else. Apart from

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corruption another area which has come in for good deal of criticism is political interference in schools and colleges which affect the discipline. To do away with the baneful effect of politicisation, a categorical suggestion is to ban the participation of students and teachers in politics.

In conclusion it will be fair to point out that though in the analysis of the communication an attempt has been-made to become as, objective as possible, the element of subjectivity is unavoidable in this type of analysis. The-results of the study, to that extent may be taken only as indicative. However, this communication represents the Views of a vast cross-section of people and howsoever unstructured the responses may be, these may be taken as indicative of major-areas of concern in education to the people of India.

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