Whither education
The challenges for the Union and the state governments on the educational front are tremendous. Not only is the downfall in academics a great concern in government schools but the dwindling child population and school dropout rate too is emerging as a grave challenge.
Though various measures were from time to time adopted by the respective governments to check out on the basic lacunas, but the measures have proved to be short lived with no tangible impact being witnessed on the ground level.
In Jammu and Kashmir the decision to rope in various Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) for their intervention in schools to improve the academic standards has also fallen flat. The move has failed to achieve the objective for which it was undertaken.
Notably, over the past two years, the school education department on the directions of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had roped in around 20 NGOs for seeking intervention in schools.
The NGO’s were given a free hand for intervention with the aim of experiencing some betterment in the overall functioning of the government schools. However, after ascertaining the results it came to fore that the move didn’t prove fruitful for the education department.
There was no improvement in the academic scenario in schools and the NGOs who were entrusted to provide their assistance in teacher training programmes also failed to deliver on this front.
Even though various workshops were conducted but except photo ops there was no other outcome that could have proved handy for the school education department. The ground situation in schools remained the same as it was before engaging these NGOs.
Pertinently, around 20 NGOs were roped in to work at the state, zonal and district levels in schools. These organizations were also assisting to mobilize out of schools children in the state but the initiative failed to bear fruits. The out of school children are growing in numbers and even the dropout rate too is witnessing an alarming trend.
The proposal to rope in NGOs was actually moved by the Union HRD ministry citing various reasons, including poor outcome of learning level of students in government schools. The data provided through various national level surveys like Annual State Education Report (ASER), National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA) and National Achievement Survey (NAS) conducted by NCERT over the years also presented a grim picture of government run school on various key feilds.
The NGOs who were later on roped in to solve the issues were supposed to help the department through various interventions like holding training programmes under erstwhile SSA and RMSA schemes and other initiatives. However, after a span of around two years there was no improvement in any aspect in the schools.
The failure of these NGO’s is also an outcome of the stonewalling of their major proposals like imparting leadership skills to Principals, Headmasters, CEO’s and ZEO’s besides conducting training sessions for the teachers.
The failure in securing an improvement in the government run schools needs a much more sincere and serious efforts than shifting the onus on these NGO’s alone. There are various stakeholders in this sector and the teachers as well as the members of the society need to some forward and help in delivering a solution that will help to rebuild the educational track that has been spoiled over the years.
KV Network
