The plan of Uttarakhand education minister Arvind Pandey to abolish state education board and bring all the schools under it under the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has raised questions about its propriety and practical applicability. Skeptics are terming it as yet another decision of the minister which is doomed to fail.
The proposal to bring all the schools of the state under the CBSE was made by Pandey during his video conferencing session with the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday. In the session, the proposal of the Uttarakhand education minister was directed to the CBSE chairman by Javadekar who accepted it. If the plan of the state education minister is implemented then Uttarakhand would be one of select few states who don’t have their own board.
However the process of abolishing the state board and implementing the CBSE board in the state is not an easy task. Before dismantling the Uttarakhand Vidhyalayi Shiksha Parishad (UVSP) or Uttarakhand board and implementing the CBSE, the government has to take into many things like infrastructure of the schools, syllabus, availability of the teachers and subject combinations. There are some subjects in the state board which are not taught under the CBSE. For example under the Uttarakhand board, the girl students can take Home Science as a subject in class X which is not allowed in the CBSE. The absence of infrastructure and tough terrain of many schools of the state is another hindrance. One senior officer of education department who has worked in the UVSP for many years said, “There are at least fifty such schools in the state which are located in such areas from where the information during the board examination takes at least a day to arrive as there is no mobile connectivity there. Apart from being highly impractical the proposal of abolishing state board is an attempt to hurt unique identity of the state.’’
The UVSP came into existence in the year 2001 when it was carved out of the Uttar Pradesh board. It conducted its first examination in the year 2002. At present it has more than 135 employees.
In this year’s examination slated to commence on March 5, 228857 students are enrolled out of which 149486 would appear in class X examination while 132337 students are enrolled for class XII examination.