AP: Education Reforms In The Offing

AMARAVATI: The Expert Committee for Reformation in Education system on Tuesday, at Secretariat, had explained its recommendations to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. Prof N Balakrishnan, Chairman of the Committee had given a presentation about the actions to be taken by the government to strengthen the educational system.

So far, the committee members have met six times and toured at the field level for several times. The expert committee said that a heavy amount has to be spent on strengthening the government education system.

Some of the key issues identified by the expert committee are the infrastructure in public schools is in poor condition and teaching practices are defective. Hence, there is a need to improve teaching skills. Registration of students in government schools is only 49.28 per cent. On the other side student registration in private schools is 43 per cent and this is highest in the world. Despite this, there is no transparency, no proper monitoring in private educational institutions. There is a significant need to improve private teacher training institutions.

The expert committee recommendations stated that a huge amount should be invested for digital education and teachers should be trained for the same. The committee has set goals for the next five years and said that should make every child between 6 and 16 years should study in schools. Student Learning Outcome should be increased by 8 percent every year and a third party confirmation should conducted.

The suggestions also stated that there should be no student dropouts at high school level and students should complete the tenth class. The gap should be reduced between urban and rural students in the society and make sure that there is no social and economic barriers. All government schools should have infrastructure and digital facilities. Campaign should be conducted to increase writing and reading skills. To see that no student from tribal areas should drop out from schools, an assessment tracking should be done on each student.

The expert committee recommended to reduce the weight of school bags. And recommended that there should be vocational education from eighth grade. As the English medium is being implemented for 1 to 8 grade students in every school from next year, all the teachers should be trained for the same. There must be an assessment of the expertise of teachers. Compulsory free education should be implemented till the intermediate and all the high schools should be upgraded to intermediate colleges.

It said that the SSC and Intermediate Boards shall be merged under one commissioner. All schools shall be brought under SERT syllabus.

A set of guidelines should be prepared for the teachers that are working in unaided schools. There should be a council for the management of Gurukul schools and a corporation for digital education. Every month the district collector should held a review meeting.