“ Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world”
New Delhi, August 16, 2021: The longest concern of the pandemic remains “non payment of school fees” and therefore the denial of online classes to the students. When right to education is a fundamental right, children continue to be denied their basic need. Many parents prefer international and private schools over local Govt. schools because of the ambience, infrastructure and quality education that they provide. If the pandemic induced financial crisis has forced parents to shift to civic schools, then it is time that the local municipalities adorn their thinking caps.
Govt. schools in our states should also be developed and improved to provide good quality education , and this can be achieved by :-
1) Providing good infrastructural facilities like:
- i) Clean toilets,, separate for boys and girls.
- ii) Potable drinking water.
iii) Classrooms with proper benches to sit.
- iv) Setting up of audio visual rooms.
2) Recruiting and filling the posts for vacancies in schools. Many of the Govt. schools do not have the 1:30 teacher – students ratio as mandated by the RTE Act. As per the statistics given by worldbank , this ratio in developed countries is 13.7 , the world average is 21.69 and in India it is 33(at the level of Primary). The government should strive hard to reduce this ratio further. This can be done by recruiting and filling the posts of teacher vacancies in schools.
3) Increasing the budget allocated for education. The budget allocation in india for the year 2020-21 is 99300 crores and in 21-22 it is cut down by 6% to 93224 crores. On an average the spending on education in our country is only about 3.5% of the GDP. The various developed nations spend 4.9% of GDP on an average on education and the world average is 4.5% as “education is investment”.
4) Enforcing a law wherein “ all Govt. employees must admit their children in Govt. schools”. This law will ensure that children of the top bureaucrats as well as the marginalized section study in the same school. This and the above steps will reduce the dropouts and there is a chance to increase the GER.
At Present the national average in india (GER) is only 26.3.
5) Organizing regular training programs and ample teaching tools to upgrade the quality of teaching. Many teachers from Govt, civic schools win the national teacher’s award. It is only the requirement of additional teaching inputs that are needed to put them on a higher podium.
The BMC educational officer Raju Tadvi and the civic educational committee member Sainath Durge are working towards providing good infrastructure and quality education to students of civic schools in Mumbai (Times Of India newspaper report). Better late than never.
Corporate Comm India (CCI NewsWire)
