Indian school education is collapsing...

When media made headlines of Dev Anand's sad demise, Justice (retired) Katju commented in his column that media has lost intellectuality as there are many serious issues in the country but are never highlighted in eight columns of the newspapers.
 
Last month, PISA ratings gave a grave scenario of Indian school education but nobody in media had taken heed of. The ASIR 2011 report, prepared by NGO Pratham, shows that both reading and arithmetic abilities of Indian students have further worsened since last year.
PISA ratings have put Indian children at the bottom of the global heap in the test of educational performance.

The report says that all India figure for the proportion of children in Class 5 able to read Class 2 text has dropped from 53.7 percent in 2010 to 48.2 percent in 2011.The decline is most pronounced in the Northern states. The fall in arithmetic abilities is seen across all states. Class 3 students can’t solve two-digit subtraction problems with borrowing method. Even Class 5 students also lack this ability.

What is the main reason behind this catastrophe? I remember that when there used to be any indiscipline or neglect in studies during our student days, we were punished by our teachers, but today no teacher can punish student for any kind of mischief or indiscipline. Student’s mischief and indiscipline are protected by laws and rules which are making them averse to studies and the resultant effect is haunting the whole education system.

Today, there is no respect for ‘Guru’ among students as well as their parents and on other hand, teachers have obtained totally professional approach that why to worry about student’s future, lets enjoy our position and salary. Lack of proper mechanism to gauge teacher’s performance on regular basis is also responsible for the decline in the standard of system.

Recently, Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal had alleged that many states in the country have failed to implement Right to Education Act. On one hand, government is eager to provide free and compulsory education to the children in the age group 6 to 14 years and on other hand central and state governments are lacking quality teachers in the absence of incentives like better pay. Moreover, the country is facing acute scarcity of trained teachers which is harming the school education.

Now the question arises whether Indian education system can survive in such a scenario???