Estranged from the ground reality, the Naveen Patnaik Government’s approach to the sagging education system in the State has been ill-founded. The Model School (Adarsha Vidyalaya) concept, despite all its noble goals, has been advanced at a time when the Government has failed to provide a model educational framework.
Though it may be argued that the merit of the new school should not be adjudged in the light of the bad shapes of the lakhs of Government primary and high schools across the State, but looking at the success rate of the old schools, which could not be improved irrespective of implementation of myriad State and Central schemes, the fate of Model School is a foregone conclusion.
The Model Schools are the boon of reaching the English medium education to the rural and far-flung areas of the State. The poor talented students in rural areas who aspire to read in convent schools but are deprived of it due to poverty and spatial difficulties have now a chance to get the facility at their doorsteps. This is an attempt to bridge the rural-urban gap and promote the talents in the rural areas. But the high ideals apart, one must not lose sight of the practical aspects.
The schools in Odisha since the British period till date are more a local entrepreneurship than directly established by the Government. The local villagers and their leaders have been the architects of a major chunk of the educational institutions, which in due course of time got validated and provided with Government aid. Since the beginning is always modest, these schools run from little or no infrastructure. But then the dedication of the teachers and the whole-hearted interest of the mass made a school, even when it operated under a tree, an ideal and effective one in producing good students and building their character. local leaders, educationists and freedom fighters built these schools brick- by- brick.
The Governments at different times farmed policy to take over them or provide them with financial grant. However, increasing political interference, financial crunch and corruption in manpower recruitment vitiated the atmosphere. local politicians vied to have grip over local institutions to grab vote and schools started to be established, given financial and infrastructural support on narrow political considerations. So much was politics a deciding factor that educational institutions which once united people emerged to be the sole factor of social polarization and unease. The most crucial thing they lost was the genuine and spirited interest of the locals.
Today the Government has implemented the Right to Education (RTE) Act and launched the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) besides a large number of kindred schemes. Now, schools are found in every hamlets and Bastis. Equally crores of rupees are spent for school building, tube well or bore well, latrine, kitchen, store houses, and several other facilities. Mid-Day Meal (MDM) is provided to the students to attract more attendance and check drop outs. Besides, an administrative mechanism has been developed to run the system with never-before-heard designations of officials like CRC, BRC, BEO, DEO and the list is endless. While in the past, the very name of a teacher used to be treated with great reverence and the teacher was the field worker and his own administrator, today the Government has reduced teachers to
Siksha Sahayaks, para teachers, contract teachers, Block Grant teachers, who neither do their work properly nor have understood the sacredness of their profession and their social commitments.
Beginning to work under low salary and an uncertain service career and having to stomach the pains of being underrated for their low status, the teachers are now a harried lot and are always restive. While being engaged in several extracurricular and petty administrative works, they tend to be far removed from their prime concern of teaching. The Government has formed village committee to look after schools but in vain.
It is high time the teachers got back their old status and were motivated to their profession. The Government can do it by doing away with the irregular recruitments and Block Grant, thereby entitling them to fair salary.
let not politics overshadow the educational institutions. The decision to set up a school or wind up one for want of required strength should be untouched by politics and based on true and unbiased study of the ground situation. The teacher-pupil ratio and basic infrastructure in school should be maintained. The most important of all is corruption-involving bungling of school project fund and MDM ration-which is committed by a nexus of higher and lower level officials and teachers must stop.
lest the Model Schools should not start with a big bang and end with a whimper, the Government must guard against all these odds.