The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Call for participatory approach

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 09, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Call for participatory approach

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JAN. 8. The three-day UNESCO seminar on `Education For All (EFA) implementation: teacher and resource management in the context of decentralisation', concluded on Saturday with a call to establish a mechanism for documentation and dissemination of best practices among the 10 participating countries.

Mir Asghar Husain, Director of Education, UNESCO, said the other proposals made at the conference included setting up an operational secretariat, preparing online resource materials for capacity-building and comprehensive approach to address gaps in EFA implementation.

Among the issues that came up for discussion were the status of EFA on the national development agenda, covering marginalised groups, dilemma between teaching in mother tongue and global language and gap between accountability and performance.

The seminar was jointly organised by UNESCO, the Administrative Staff College of India and the National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration. The Union Human Resource Development Minister, Arjun Singh, who was to deliver the valedictory address could not make it.

Holistic intervention

The State Chief Secretary, Mohan Kanda, wanted the Government interventions to be holistic. Education cannot be treated in isolation.

The best approach was to make it participatory, gender sensitive and environment friendly.

As for decentralisation, it should not be a mere formality and if necessary legislative means should be adopted to strengthen it, he added. The emphasis should shift from quantity to quality and if everything from agriculture to drinking water could be market and demand driven, why not education, he wondered.

K. M. Acharya, Joint Secretary, Union HRD Ministry, wanted the participants to take into account aspects like poverty alleviation and nutrition while implementing EFA.

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