Underscoring the need for developing “School as a Wholesome Learning Environment”, the Punjab Education Minister Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema today said that the school system should offer wholesome learning and other activities for overall personality development of the students. In his keynote address during Zonal Level Conference on New Education Policy here today, Dr. Cheema said that host of co-curricular activities need to be offered to the teaching community to offer at least one or two such activities for each student. He said that adequate resources should be provided to establish co-curricular clubs in the schools and to deploy teachers having adequate skills to foster such activities adding that NSS and NCC should be made compulsory at certain stages. The Cabinet Minister said that life skills, ethical learning, general knowledge should be part of such activities besides ensuring that NCC should be made mandatory in institutions where degree courses or diploma courses in physical education were being offered. “Punjab has already made sports and physical activity a compulsory part of school activity during school hours and we are mulling to introduce compulsory co-curricular activities for fostering creative and other potentialities of the students” he added.
Describing mother tongue as the best language to impart education , he said that it should solely be the medium to provide education till senior secondary level . However he said that thrust must be laid on english language as a particular subject so as to enable the students to compete globally.Appreciating the endeavor of the Government of India (GoI) to initiate a comprehensive consultative process involving all stakeholders right from the grass root level to frame National Education Policy (NEP) afresh, Dr. Cheema said that the state government appreciate the effort of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) for evolving a comprehensive consultative process for framing the new Education Policy. He said that they believe that with this process, the NEP would be far better than the existing one and usher in quality school education in the country.Laying thrust on need for imparting ‘Inclusive Education’, Dr. Cheema said that the present system of dispersed provisions for differently able children for the formal education system has proved to be inadequate to address the real issue being faced by such students and their parents. Dr. Cheema said that one specialized institution should be established at the district level, which further could be extended at the block and tehsil level depending upon the number of students available in these categories. Likewise, he said that a policy of mixed schools with specialized wings should be established where these students would have healthy interaction with normal students with a feeling of self -confidence and self- esteem.
Batting for examination reforms in school education, Dr. Cheema said that the present system of evaluation exaggerated the marks obtained in the school leaving examinations conducted by various boards. Citing examples he said that it was not understood as how students were scoring 100 out of 100 in subjects like language and Social Studies. Dr. Cheema said that the evaluation needs thorough revamping as to give adequate emphasis on various difficulty levels in the question papers.Flagging another vital issue Dr. Cheema said that the students from the weaker section faced a potential barrier in learning due to absence of pre-school environment. He said that the Anganwari system has multifarious objectives and was completely detached from the formal schooling system, thereby creating a social divide between the haves and have-nots. Dr. Cheema said that it would be better to bring the play/ pre- school component of Anganwari under the formal schooling system with regular para- teachers specially trained for this purpose.
Dr. Cheema apprised that in Punjab a comprehensive e-governance system as pilot project in district Ropar has been initiated to use e-governance and m-governance tools for effective monitoring the coverage of syllabus, learning outcomes of students, remedial measures undertaken by the teachers, parent consulting, etc at periodic intervals, in addition to monitoring teacher and student attendance. He recommended that the new education policy should give die emphasis for ensuring teacher accountability in the form of students’ learning outcomes at various levels adding that resources should be earmarked and schemes should be devised to have robust system of monitoring of learning outcomes at periodic intervals by external bodies.Laying thrust on significant need for upgrading skills of exiting teachers through a robust system of systematic and compulsory in-service training linked to their career progressions, Dr. Cheema said that proposed NEP should emphasize the importance of skill upgradtion and motivational training of existing teachers through proper in-service training linked to career progression.
Dr. Cheema further recommended that the NEP should give adequate emphasis on fair and merit based recruitment conducted at regular intervals every year. He said that rationalization and deployment of teachers as per student strength should be undertaken every three years as the policy implemented in Punjab. Dr. Cheema also said that the teaching hours and teaching days for each subject should be fixed and the holidays for schools should be delinked from government holidays except for some important national holidays with the flexibility of accommodating local holidays in each region. The tendency of extending all government holidays to schools should be avoided as the teaching and the student community avail summer as well as the winter vacations.
Dr. Cheema further said that special emphasis should be given to recruiting quality teachers for Science, Mathematics and Language Teaching with adequate incentive structure and encouraging innovation in improving the methods of imparting teaching in these subjects. The National and State Award schemes should foster completion for innovation in teaching these subjects.
Dr. Cheema further said that the students of the government schools, particularly at the secondary and higher secondary levels , were deprived of the relevant and timely information as well as guidance to pursue appropriate careers or professions after leaving school. He said that Punjab government has initiated a policy of deploying professionally trained career guidance and psychological counselors at the district level for this purpose. Dr. Cheema said that it should be made mandatory for each secondary and senior secondary school to have a professional counselor. To start with, such counselors may be deployed at cluster level and in secondary and senior secondary schools having large number of students.Dr. Cheema further said that National Education Policy (NEP) should also give adequate emphasis on improving the overall environment and the look of the schools including cleanliness and periodic maintenance. He said that the Ministry of Non Conventional Energy should encourage deployment of solar power systems in schools, which may also be linked to the general grid system as this would reduce the maintenance cost of electricity bills and would ensure uninterrupted supply to school including computing and communication systems.
He further said that the maintenance and school grants should take care of replacement of school assets like computers at periodic intervals.Dr. Cheema further said that the schools should be rated on the base of number of parameters in the manner the National Academic Accreditation Council(NAAC) carries accreditation of higher educational institutes. He said that there should be Accreditation Councils at the state and the national level to rate schools and teacher training institutions in the country.Dr. Cheema also said that the NEP should rectify the existing deficiencies in the system of resource allocation in various centrally sponsored schemes. He said that there should be seamless transition from one stream to other within the credit transfer system under the new National Skill Qualification Framework.