Letter from the Editor
It's an indication of the growing awareness of the vital importance of education and its upward movement on the national agenda that the draft National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005 has aroused violent passions and stimulated a cross-country debate. Its predecessor the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFE) 2000 which proposed radical changes in the direction of hollow, divisive super nationalism, was cursorily debated and served as a convenient justification for the BJP-led NDA government to attempt to rewrite history from a hindutva standpoint, politicise and generally mess with school curriculums. Likewise, the debate of education policy papers such as the New Education Policy, 1986 and even the landmark Kothari Commission Report, 1966 remained confined to Delhi’s charmed circles and were interpreted by state governments and self-styled educationists to suit their prejudices and proclivities. That’s why post-independence India’s school education system — particularly state and municipal government schools which teach 90 percent of the nation’s 200 million enrolled children — is in a shambles. Characterised by rote learning, poor quality textbooks, ill-defined medium of instruction and language learning policy, crowded classrooms and crumbling infrastructure, contemporary India’s public school education system is hopelessly outdated, if not obsolete. Conditions are better in the country’s private schools where infrastructure and curriculums tend to be more supportive of children in their formative years. But the number of privately promoted schools is relatively small approximating to only 10-15 percent of the total number (1.03 million). The obsolete curriculums of the school system explains the curious paradox of a severe shortage of skilled personnel within an economy in which the number of unemployed has topped 44 million.
The NCF 2005 draft is a thoughtful, well-written policy paper which needs to be thoroughly discussed and debated before it is finalised. And it’s befitting that the first major debate of NCF 2005 is presented by EducationWorld — the country’s sole education newsmagazine.
But while it is comprehensive, cogent and articulate, NCF 2005 is not without its flaws. It is arguable that it fudges the vital question of the resource mobilisation effort required to implement its recommendations. Nor has it taken a forthright stand on the status of English language learning for which there is widespread demand. These and other issues related to the NCF 2005 draft which could make or mar the future of 415 million children are discussed in our cover story to which you are cordially invited.
By a happy coincidence our special report feature in this issue is intimately connected with, and has a direct bearing on NCF 2005. Right here in Bangalore, former high-flying businesswoman Shukla Bose who experienced a pauline conversion to the cause of educating underprivileged slum children in the mid 1990s, has promoted and manages three free primary schools which could prove a good model to the authors and discussants of NCF 2005. Uncompromising about equal quality English medium education for slum children, Bose is a forthright practitioner of the common school system recommended by the Kothari Commission way back in 1966.
She believes that provision of holistic English medium education (as per the Parikrma Humanity Foundation’s ‘Circle of Life’ model) is the only way to help under-served children to break out of the poverty-illiteracy-poverty cycle. And she’s acting on this belief right now — at a per student cost (Rs.15,000) which is reportedly lower than that of the Bangalore Municipal Corporation. Is this the school model urban India needs? Judge for yourself.
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