Chairman of the Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC), Anand Bhushan stressed upon a united effort to improve examination results and called for a change in the approach towards education with more responsibility and commitment to the society and students to achieve better results in future. In an interview, the JAC Chairman speaks on the way forward after a dismal show in Matric and Intermediate—Science and Commerce— in the examinations of 2015. Excerpts:
Results have been announced now what is the way forward.
There should be good coordination among schools, teachers, children, parents, government and JAC in future. Results have also been affected where teachers were there, but they lacked motivation and commitment. What we need is commitment, motivation as these play a significant role and form the basis of everything. And we can inculcate both attributes through workshops, media, on the spot training or any other means. Government has started a programme—Vidyalaya Chaley Chalayein Abhiyan—and they are trying to unite people which is what we must do—unite people.
Results were more or less similar to that of previous year. How do you see the performanceIJ
Newspapers talk about a dip of one percent or two percent. It (small decline) hardly matters. It speaks about our honesty and transparency that we presented what was there. We are not here to improve exam results. Important is if we performed once and that is maintained then it (zeal to excel) has definitely entered in the blood. Result in science was 30 per cent and if results reached 63 per cent and it continues then it signals that our workshops, sample questions have helped.
What went wrong and what should be doneIJ Your message after resultIJ
We have to work more hard. We gave questions in schools and questions of all major subjects are available on internet. If students prepare or being taught accordingly or take benefit of mock tests taken by us then we can improve. If improvement is not upto mark, then either the students were weak compared to last year or people became complacent that students are improving. Regular monitoring is needed and you have to make education more interesting. It has to be looked also how many teachers are there, what is the infrastructure and gaps in manpower.
What is the role of JAC in improving resultsIJ
We are an examining body with no role in the improvement of education but people tend to confuse our responsibilities. We expanded our scope because there is no lakshman Rekha for doing good work and we did whatever was not in our domain. We taught how to read, how to make a subject interesting, how to select questions, evaluation method, step wise marking, what is the commitment towards society and students.
How effective was monitoring evaluation through CCTVsIJ Should it be used more widely elsewhereIJ
We introduced monitoring of evaluation process on a pilot basis to make the evaluators understand there is someone watching them and when they have this in their back of mind they become serious about their job. Tomorrow if the government wants to implement this at schools they will install CCTVs to monitor class rooms activities there and improvise to hear what is going on in a class room then we will get return on every penny invested. This is my vision however I have no role in this. We have shown the path, now it is for the government to decide.
Any new projects in pipeline at JACIJ
We are upgrading the office and MIS will be introduced at the office. JAP-IT has provided us the requisite infrastructure and now we will begin training programmes. It will need three to four years to train officials. The ball is rolling now.