MAIN RECOMMENDATIONS
 

8.01 Support to National Policy on Education

On the basis of wide ranging discussions with members of the community, students and teachers, as also with educationists the Commission has had the opportunity of going into practically every aspect of education, the educational system, the working of the institutions, the facilities available, the condition of the teachers, and the perceptions of all connected with the system. The data collected by the study conducted by the Central Technical Unit in the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration has been of tremendous help to us in establishing a quantitative basis for the formulation of our ideas and recommendations. We find ourselves in complete agreement with paragraph 3 of the National Policy on Education adopted as a resolution by the Parliament in 1968, and which we quote:

"The Government of India is convinced that a radical reconstruction of education on the broad lines recommended by the Education Commission is essential for economic and cultural development of the country, for national integration and for realising the ideal of a socialistic pattern of society. This will involve a transformation of the system to relate it more closely to the life of the people; a continuous effort to expand the educational opportunity; a sustained and intensive effort to raise the quality of education at all stages; an emphasis on the development of science and technology; and the cultivation of moral and social values. The educational system must producer young men and women of character and ability committed to national service and development. Only then will education be able to play its vital role in promoting national progress, creating a sence of common citizenship and culture, and Strengthening national integration. This is necessary if the country is to attain its rightful place in the comity of nations in conformity with its great cultural heritage and its unique potentialities."

We believe that a programme of action in keeping with this Resolution needs to be worked out so that teachers are seen as a part of the visualized environment. We are, therefore, constrained to make some observations about the educational system in general. In the main body of the Report, land Particularly in Chapter II, we have already indicated our general view regarding education which would be related to the life of the people and especially the productive activity of our society. Hence we will avoid arguing out points at length. We may also mention that our suggestions and recommendations are really an integrated whole because we have examined the system as such, therefore while these recommendations are made in a certain order it doesn't mean that the last one is the least important, and that a "transformation" would be possible if only a few convenient ideas are picked up for implementation.

8.02 Purusit of Excellence and Relevance : Curricula

In our view education as a man making and society making activity cannot be slipshod. The quest for quality must be the focus of attention and whatever districts from it must be remedied. The basic interaction of students and teachers is around the curriculum which, in the field of higher education, has received great attention and has been the subject of much research. In our conditions, it must be considered from the point of view of modernization, since obsolescence creeps in very fast and of relevance. since we often tend to accept whatever has been developed in other countries for their societies. Relevance is related to the needs of the

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individuals, to eventual employment, as well as to the needs of society, for social, cultural and economic development.. The curriculum must also take into account modem theories of learning, so as to optimize the outcomes (coguitive, creative, attitudinal and social and physical skills) for each individual. Evaluation is an integral part of it, because. it has the potential of shifting the focus from the objectives of learning. The methods of "teaching", or the modes of inter-action between the teacher and the learner must also be appropriate so that the objectives of the curriculum are achieved. Modern technology has opened up new possibilities of learning by one's own effort at one's own pace, and these must be utilized to achieve the best results.

Unfortunately, the situation in our country in this respect is very unsatisfactory. Curricula are not evolved by consideration other than "how to cover a course" or how to put in more, material in it. They are executed basically by lecturing, unsupported by active contact with small groups or individuals. The examinations are said to be, (by various committees and commissions) neither reliable nor valid. One can well imagine the poverty of learning but the prevailing reality is much worse. What is intended, on paper, to be "taught" is not covered since there is not enough working time in a year, lecturing often reduces to teaching from out of date notes, and in some cases, mere dictation of these notes. In examinations a student can leave out a good Part of the course altogether since questions asked in the preceding year are not likely to be repeated, and there is bound to be a 50 per cent choice in answering the questions. We shall not mention other mal-practices, like "copying" which are reported to be on the increase.

8.03 Enforcement of Minimum Standards

This gives us the basis to recommend that (a) centres should be established for research and development in curricula, by grouping subjects facultywise, (b) the UGC and the central and state governments should enforce the minimum standards for the award of at least undergraduate degrees-seeing to it that institutions teach a minimum of 180 days. that teachers discharge their duties in regard to lectures, tutorials, seminars, laboratories etc.. and (c) -examination reform be undertaken to have continuous internal assessment (by the teacher who takes the class) introduced with proper checks and records, whose weightage in the final result Should be rapidly increased, (d) teachers should receive systematic but short courses of training and refreshine of their knowledge every five years or so during the course of their service. We are particularly in favour of the introduction of foundation courses in undergraduate programmes to acquaint and make our students aware of our tradition, culture, history, freedom struggle, constitution, developmental problems, the necessity of an enlightened set of values which would bring about modernity and unity irrespective of caste, creed, religion, language or region. We recommend that broad based courses and materials on these subjects may be evolved, and the UGC may cause this to be done, by selecting authors/editors and providing funds for the purpose. We recommend that application and job oriented courses should be introduced on a large scale and in greater variety with the UGC undertaking to implement its programme in this field with adequate resources, accompanied by provision of advice to institutions willing to do so, and monitoring and evaluation. The approach ought to be flexible since institutions may need to adopt different strategies for the purpose. We shall be coming back to this aspect in a later section.

8.04 Autonomy and Major Support to Selected Colleges

The institutional set up of higher education has a big role in determining its quality. In our country, 85 per cent of undergraduate and 55 per cent of post-graduate education is given in the affiliated colleges whose teachers control neither the curriculum nor the evaluation of students' performance. Research facilities in these institutions are nominal or non-existent. Thus there is no outlet or occasion for their creative initiative, and they are almost reduced to being puppets under the remote control of the universities. Nevertheless, the number of such colleges keeps growing at the rate of about a hundred every year. According to the UGC's yardstick of eligibility for financial support, nearly 40 per cent are "non-viable" but they continue to carry on teaching with inadequate resources, and highly deficient facilities. We are caught in the dilemma that limited funds do not allow us to improve their working across the board. and selective support is suspect and sometime condemned as "elitism". The autonomy of the teacher and of the institution has been accepted and advocated as a matter of policy, yet it is prevented from being exercised. In our view it is crucial for implementation of the worthwhile educational programmes that the States, the universities concerned and the UGC should come together immediately to identify a few hundred colleges for consolidated high inputs with shared funding accompanied by acceptance of reform in the nature

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and design of courses, teaching methods, community work, examinations and management of academic activity in cooperation with developmental departments. There may be strong colleges included in the list, there should also be colleges in remote areas, tribal regions and fulfilling other purposes of widely spreading benefits of good education. These may be declared as autonomous colleges in the first phase and their progress should be monitored and evaluated so that in the second phase another few hundred colleges may be added to them. Since these would be colleges striving for excellence, it would be necessary to specially select students for admission to these colleges, or at least 50 to 60 percent students should be from amongst those who are talented as determined by a test. They would have to have hostel facilities to enable non-local students to take advantage of them. If 400 such colleges are selected, within a few years nearly 4 lakh students would be getting high quality education which would raise the average national standard and provide a working model of our young people interacting with the community and environment through creative work.

8.05 Distance Learning and Audio-visual Software in Libraries

We are aware that it is equally important to make higher education accessible more widely, particularly to those sections and regions who are only now arriving to enter this level of education. Many other needs based courses are required to be disseminated, which may not necessarily lead to a degree. With modern technology and mass communication. It is possible to reach larger numbers, and to transform correspondence education into high quality and purposive education. The same technology can enrich formal education by providing audio or video cassettes and software to the libraries of. universities and selected colleges so that students may benefit from such material. We welcome the intention of the Government of India to set up a national open university and we hope that its activities will be so designed as to take advantage of the existing system of correspondence institutes to have an effective network reaching out to every corner of India. We also recommend that television programmes being broadcast through the satellite should be expanded and a separate channel for education may be provided in future. The UGC should give due encouragement to the setting up of audio and video software libraries in the colleges. Computer aided learning should also be encouraged and eventually software and micro computers should be made available in the higher educational institutions.

8.06 Linkages with Community and Development

In the last few decades, we have accepted in India the concept of education being brought closer to the people, their activities as well their dreams -of the future. The National Policy on Education and many other subsequent documents speak of it. The Sixth Five Year Plan document repeatedly stresses the importance of linkages between education, employment and development. In our view it is not a day too soon to give organizational and institutional shape to these link- ages. Work experience in the schools, vocational courses at the +2 level, job oriented or applicational courses at the undergraduate level undoubtedly require part time teachers from the community, from the village potter, the banker, the journalist, to the engineer or doctor; advice is needed in the development of need based courses, and sharing of facilities with existing workshops, hospitals and establishments of public or private sector industry should also be brought into the realm of possibility. Students, particularly of postgraduate and undergraduate classes could study various aspects of the environment, resources and local situation and could analyse the data to as to enrich their knowledge from first band study and to make this material available for planning and developmental needs. Students are required to do extension work and participate in continuing education programme for the local people, and both these activities would take them out of the four walls of the college and throw them into the field of personal experience. Then there is the area of research, of which the seed is laid by the studies mentioned above, but many problems of interest to local development such as optimum use of resource available, resolution of specific problem come across during agricultural or industrial production, or evolution of suitable technologies. for rural development in particular, can be tackled by exchange of experience and information between the scholars and researches, and the local administration and development personnel.

In our view the setting up of district level "Education and Development Council," would be very useful to give shape to the linkage and coordinate activities. District councils could then be summated and coordinated by a state level council. These councils are bound to provide the knowledge base for planning and development, they will prepare the ground and the personnel for the various tasks because of actual involvement in problem solving, and they are likely to generate and adjust employment as well as entrepreneurship, not only in the sense of setting up industry but also in the sense of optimising opportunity for self-employment. We also believe that the logistics

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of operation are very important and a working group may be set up at the Centre to work them out. Financing of this activity should not be a burden on education, and it may come out of the resources we are going to discuss next.

8.07 Resources for Education

The range of activities discussed above, all essential if education is to be transformed into an active device for national growth and integration, cannot be undertaken by the present ramshackled system with its awesome deficiencies. In our view, if we accept the challenge of transformation, we must carefully design our targets, implementational phasing and strategy, and we must be prepared to pay the bill. The absence of this will to move forward, it is clear to us, would increase the gap between tasks and the systems' ability to deliver and cause a further crisis. It is wiser to attend to the problems of resources right away. The stark reality seems to be that in spite of our declarations, the allocation for education both as percentage of the Plan and as per capita expenditure at constant value of the rupee has been declining. If the Plan expenditure has come down from 7.5 per cent in the First Plan to 2.6 per cent in the Sixth Plan, ordinary arithmetic will show that a 20 or 30 per cent increase (over 2.6 per cent) during the Seventh Plan will not do.

The key, in our view, lies in the "linkages" we have have accepted to forge. The education system can and must serve all developmental activity through manpower preparation and research and development, continuing education and extension. Hence, every expansion and diversification development activity visualized and allocated for in a Plan must visualize corresponding inputs for education. The simplest step would be to set apart, say 5 per cent every allocation, for a development sector in order to cater for its manpower, R & D, and operation of suitable links and interaction with research and education. A major part of this must go to the educational sector in order to strengthen and transform it in the desired direction. We strongly advocate a policy decision to treat education as an investment in development.

We have also to modify the processes by which funds flow into actual activities. It is common knowledge that even though States may be spending "25 per cent" of their budget on education, it is barely enough to pay the salaries of teachers, which are so low indeed. The States must adopt policies to support and consolidate existing institutions (without a tremendous amount of red tape) before having unplanned proliferation. The universities in turn, will have to modify their financial rules so that money received by them is not held up in their bank, but it goes to the basic units, (such as the departments) and invertigator for whom it is meant. Devolution of financial authority is urgently needed so that people and the basic units can function with greater autonomy and expedition.

8.08 Management of Institutions

All the educational changes and reforms, with all the money at our disposal will prove ineffective, and 'may be counterproductive, if the system lacks coherence, if afflicted with lack of discipline, and suffers from poor work ethics or plain unwillingness to work conscientiously. The over view which we have been privileged to have and our concern with end results or performance of the system leads to say that a two-fold policy must be pursued : we must give the teacher a place of honour, good salary, prospects of a good career depending on performance, adequate personal and professional facilities, we must set up mechanisms to remove his specific grievances, but we must demand work and responsibility from him. The management have to be strengthened in order that the imbalance which has crept in between democracy and accountability is corrected. This requires modification in Acts and Statutes, and also administration without fear or favour, and accountability on the part of "managers" too. We are generally in favour of the various recommendations in this sphere made by the Review Committee of the Central Universities. We are happy to note that Vice-Chancellor's conferences have also expressed a similar view.

8.09 Living and Working Conditions

The above having been said, we are sure that both in order to attract talent to the teaching profession and to provide it an opportunity to give of its best to our students and scholars, we have to greatly improve the living and working conditions throughout the country. Therefore, we recommend that the salary scales, dearness allowance, promotional opportunities, working conditions as well as service conditions, particularly such as study leave and sabbatical leave must be uniform for the whole country, except for hardship allowances in difficult areas such as, Ladakh, Lahaul Spiti, northeastern region etc.