 TEXT OF SPEECH OF SHRI ARJUN SINGH, FORMER UNION MINISTER OF HRD, GOVT. OF INDIA, INDIA

Ladies & Gentlemen,

I am happy to be here on, the event of the inauguration of the Annual Sahodaya School Conference. I feel the national conference of this nature for sharing of experiences and charting new directions is useful to face the challenges of 21st century.

We are living in exciting times. Technology is causing rapid social changes. The vision of the world which is unfolding before us will be decided by the education which is imparted in educational institutions and in this secondary education occupies a central place. As the country moves to achieve universal primary education, the question of universal Secondary Education is logical. The Board of Secondary Education would be well advised to prepare for this and begin now.

India has made major advances in many spheres of school education and we can be justly proud of them. A common 10+2 structure for school level has been brought about and quite uniform and decent pay scales as also teacher qualifications have been brought about. Under the leadership of the NCERT and of the CBSE their curriculum has become the reference level for the curricula in the states. Thus, quite a decent floor level cooperation has been put in place. However, I ask you to see that many of these changes have come from the top. I wonder whether you ask why it is so. If education is the vehicle of enlightenment, then the educational set up in the Boards of Secondary Education should not be so passive. I trust you would consider ways of changing this situation and devise measures so that educational renewal comes about now at the initiative of the State Boards and Sahodaya Complexes.

I am sure there would be general agreement that the experts in Boards have tended to favour status quo in academic matters. This is not a happy situation and the State Boards should consider widening the area from which their Boards and experts come and include more of those members who are willing to change and innovate. The", secondary education will be best served only if the curriculum renewal becomes meaningful and more frequent.

Everyone agrees that the aim of education is to prepare students for their adult life as citizens. Therefore, education for citizenship or value education has to be a central theme in education. This however, unfortunately is not so yet in our country. Our obsession with information and, therefore, with marks obtained in examinations has tended to push out all aspects of education which are more qualitative than

8 Text of Speech of Sh. Arjun Singh

quantitative. To some extent, this has been due to the pressure of unemployment and therefore, a large urge to secure maximum marks in examinations so that the chances of admission in higher courses or of selection in jobs are improved. However, it is for State Boards to accept this fact of life and still protect the essence of education, i.e., to sufficiently provide for citizenship education or value education. How this should be done and what should be the content is for you to deliberate and decide but perhaps it can be said that a less formalised mechanism which does not rely solely on lessons and lectures would probably be more effective.

You would have observed that the drop-out rate at secondary level is about 50% or more. This is certainly not normal. It should concern you in a large manner. Obviously, the students are either finding the education irrelevant or they are unable to cope with the curriculum. May be action is needed on both these fronts. A place in the curriculum with provision for internal compulsory reading, participation in at least one creative discipline, skill acquisition in at least one area as for example of typing, word processing, etc. and participation in sports /physical education/fitness test could be one effective way of making education more meaningful and satisfying. Simultaneously, the Boards need to explore whether the load of information can be reduced in the syllabi and more emphasis can be given to the underlying themes and trends in the social sciences and on the principles in the sciences. Some of the space so vacated can be used to provide for problem-solving skills and experience to the students. A total obsession with information is becoming so much that no human brain can in any case accommodate and after all, information is something one can always access if the source of information is known.

The examination system has become more objective and, therefore, more reliable over the years but to achieve this it has to rely more and more on objective questions or short answer questions. However, many people feel that this has led to reduced importance to power of expression of communication skill. I feel the Boards should give consideration to the format of question papers again and see whether the balance should not move from the extremity of the purely objective question papers to somewhere in the middle where the question paper would have some objective type of questions and some which test the capacity of the student to express himself well.

I have listed some of the issues which occur to me readily. Surely they are not all. You would, no doubt, give a more detailed consideration to these and other issues but the main point I wish to make before you is that the validity of these issues should be examined and if you feel these are valid issues, you should agree to sit up and tackle them. I am sure if highly experienced and learned people like you decide to accept the need for reorganising things to take care of the issues, a lot of good will come about within the next few years.

I wish you all success in your endeavours.

Thank you.