School Education and literacy department Secretary Aradhana Patnaik has expressed concern over quality of government owned primary and middle schools and said that this was something the government was serious about, mending it at the earliest.
Speaking at a conference on ‘Quality Education in Jharkhand’ on Friday, she, however, said that the overall quality of schools in terms of basic infrastructure and content on primary and middle school level had considerably improved during last two years.
“We have worked a lot in last two years for improving overall quality of education in primary and middle schools in the State. We have inducted over 18,000 primary education teachers in last two years and another 10,000 are in the pipeline. For the first time in history of Jharkhand, we have succeeded in turning 650 panchayats zero drop out in just one year. We have equipped 90 percent of schools with bench-desk and rest 10 percent will be getting it soon,” said Patnaik in the conference organized by Jharkhand Right To Education Forum.
However, Patnaik said that the undue comparison between government owned and private schools was not desirable at all. “Private schools have completely different ecosystem with almost no scarcity of resource. However, we are trying our best to make the government schools role model for others,” added Patnaik where Vinoba Bhave University Vice Chancellor Dr Ramesh Sharan, former Foreign Secretary and education expert Muchkund Dubey, JSCPCR Chairperson Arti Kujoor, Kolhan University ex-Vice Chancellor RPP Singh, RTE Forum National Convener Ambarish Rai, Netarhat Residential School Principal Vindhyanchal Pandey, Journalist Madhukar, lEADS Director AK Singh were also present.Dubey stressed upon very basic requirement of education, saying that the governments had apparently failed to understand it. “Education without quality leads to nowhere, nor it equips with capabilities to fight with day to day affairs. This is why Supreme Court of India added education as a component of right to live. What we as a society have been missing is that right to live is not just live like animal, but to live with dignity. This is exactly what even policy makers at every stage appear to be missing, because what we have been providing in the name of education has been falling completely short of building a human being which is educated in true sense,” said Dubey.
Pandey, at the same time, came forward with a new kind of requirement for improvement in education quality. “We don’t require infrastructure. In place of it, we require intrastructure. Intrastructure which leads us to introspects whatever we have been providing on the name of education system. We have completely destroyed possibilities of heart-to-heart interaction in schools which has left the system broken down,” said Pandey. citing good practices adopted by Netarhat to restore human interactions.