‘The policy fails to address the need of improving the public education system and focuses on private education.’
Manish Sisodia. (Photo:twitter@msisodia)
Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday spoke on the new National Education Policy (NEP) and said that the proposal in the new NEP to make board exams easy will not address the issue of rote learning because the education system will continue to be a slave of the evaluation system.
The policy fails to address the need of improving the public education system and focuses on private education, and some of the reforms outlined are part of wishful thinking, he said.
“Our education system has always been a slave of our evaluation system, and it will continue to be so. The plan to make board exams easy is not going to address the root cause of the problem which is the focus on rote learning. The emphasis will still be on year-end exams, the need is to do away with the concept of evaluating students at the end of the session, be it easy or difficult,” Mr Sisodia told PTI in an interview.
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“By saying that board exams will be easy, we are not moving towards focus on knowledge application. The policy fails to address this issue. Some of the reforms proposed are good too and in fact, we have already been working on them, but some of them are just part of a wishful thinking,” he added.
Asserting that the policy, which has been revised after decades, does not focus on government schools, Mr Sisodia said, “There is no mention at all about what can be done or what will be done to improve the state of public schools in the country. Does that mean all initiatives will be successfully implemented in private schools and colleges and that is the only way out?”
“The policy says philanthropic participation will be encouraged. Almost all big chains of schools and even higher educational institutions are based on a philanthropic model only, which the Supreme Court has already referred to as ‘teaching shops’. So are we going to encourage that only? Why did we need a new policy then,” he asked.
(With inputs from PTI)
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