Vice-Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission, PM Bhargava, has proposed radical changes to the education system — most of which are at variance with the HRD ministry’s views.
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To start with, Bhargava advocated a common school system by setting up a national-level School Regulatory Authority and winding up the Central Board of School Education and the Indian School Certificate Board.
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In his paper presented at a seminar organised by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) on Tuesday, Bhargava also asked the ministry to recall its order asking states to implement the Right to Education Bill, saying it was the Centre's "responsibility".
He said the management of all government schools should be with local panchayats and private schools should be under strict watch to check profiteering.
On the present school curriculum, Bhargava said the emphasis should be on acquiring "knowledge" rather than "skills" for the job market. English should be taught from class I, along with the regional language. Students should get a chance to reappear in exams in case they fail to clear them and should also assess the performance of their teachers, he said.
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Predicting that India will need 3,000 universities with each having not more than 10,000 students, Bharagava proposed to convert good private or public colleges into universities.
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Predicting that India will need 3,000 universities with each having not more than 10,000 students, Bharagava proposed to convert good private or public colleges into universities.
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He also said that instead of the University Grants Commission or the All India Council of Technical Education, there should be an autonomous higher education regulatory authority.
Bharagava also recommended a national test on the lines of ETS of Princeton before students get into higher education institutes.
Others academics like R Govinda, Anil Sadgopalan, HP Dikshit and MS Yadav asked the government to revise its policies.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
