The Hindu : Other States / Madhya Pradesh News : Vocational courses in school syllabus under study

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Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004

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Vocational courses in school syllabus under study

By Lalit Shastri

BHOPAL, SEPT. 28. Serious thought is being given in Madhya Pradesh for making the syllabus at the High School level more flexible by introducing special vocational courses that can be incorporated as full-fledged subjects along with those being taught in schools.

A senior bureaucrat, involved in the decision-making process at the highest level, expressed the view that major steps would have to be taken to overhaul the school education system. He said "it is unfortunate that we have continued to retain a system of education where almost 75 per cent of the students fail to clear the tenth class examination conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education every year". "The number of those who fail to clear the Class X examination is massive. Therefore, it is obvious that those rejected through the formal examination system would constitute the majority of our electorate," he added.

Last year, only 25.88 per cent students could pass the Class X examination conducted by the State Board. This year, 29.19 per cent students could clear the examination.

In the administrative circles here, there is a school of thought that wants the State Government to take the bold initiative of revising the school syllabus. However, there is another section in the bureaucracy that wants to continue with the present syllabus but at the same time it also wants to introduce new courses like dairy and horticulture keeping the rural students in mind.

When contacted, the former Chairman of Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education, K.K. Sethi, told The Hindu that the main problem was that too much was taught in the lower classes. This prevents the children from developing their faculty to think and apply knowledge to fulfil the day-to-day needs. Moreover, the problem gets aggravated as students are forced to end up cramming their subjects as we try to convert them into specialists in various subjects at a very early stage.

Mr. Sethi said that evaluation of school students should be restricted to grading the students and no one should be detained in a class. However, he emphasised that instead of grading the students on a scale of ten (alphabetically), it would be more advisable to grade them on a scale of hundred.

Talking to some officials in the School education department, it could be gathered that for improving

the performance of schools, particularly in the remote areas, considerable initiative was needed to streamline the school administration system.

Reflecting on this matter, a senior educationist said there was dearth of accountability in the absence of regular monitoring and inspections by senior supervisory level officers and even the data about thousands of teachers and their postings was not centrally available with the State Government.

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Vocational courses in school syllabus under study