Mumbai is still reeling from the shocking exam-stress related suicides of class V and VIII students Jitesh Chavan (12) and Divya Solanki (14) on May 1. The former had scored well in his exam, but was unhappy with his performance. The latter had failed to clear the class VIII annual examination and was detained. Ironically, these two children took their lives a day after state education minister Balasaheb Thorat declared that as per the provisions of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009, no child between the ages six-14 will be detained in the same class or expelled from school for academic reasons.
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Speaking on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Maharashtra Day (May 1), when the erstwhile Bombay state was bifurcated into Maharashtra (current pop. 99 million) and Gujarat (55 million) with Bombay aka Mumbai, as the administrative capital of Maharashtra, Thorat exhorted the school education department to ensure that all children in primary schools are automatically promoted all the way up to class VIII. “We will identify weak students and impart special training to teachers to mentor such students. Meanwhile, all students will have to write the unit test, quarterly and half-yearly examinations. We don’t want students to be promoted automatically. Every student will be prepared for promotion,” he said.
Although some educationists and educators entertain doubts about the impact of s.16, which prohibits detention of children in classes I-VIII for academic under-performance, most educators in Mumbai are in favour of this provision which they believe will reduce children’s anxiety and academic stress in primary and upper primary education. Indeed, most private schools have been practising no-child-left-behind actively in recent years, because they have installed remedial education systems to tutor weak students.
“Promoting a child without training and bringing him to average level will harm a child’s self esteem. So the state government’s thrust on remedial action before promotion is an excellent initiative. We already have a continuous comprehensive evaluation system in place, in which weak students are identified, given project assignments, frequent testing and smaller portions of the syllabus,” says Avnita Bir, principal of the Ram Niranjan Poddar School, Mumbai (estb.1998) which has 2,500 students instructed by 80 teachers on its muster roll.
While welcoming the state government’s sensitivity towards weak students, Sr. Beena C.J, principal of St. Joseph’s High, Juhu, warns that the impact of s.16 of the RTE Act is the transference of stress from students to teachers. “Teachers will have to customise their pedagogies to focus on weak students. Ensuring timely completion of work, monitoring their progress, and building confidence in them is not easy for teachers, especially with a rise in student-teacher ratios and a dearth of good quality teachers,” says Sr. Beena.
With the RTE Act scheduled to become operational countrywide in the forthcoming academic year beginning June/July, schools as well as teachers are likely to experience implementation turbulence. The early determination exhibited by the Maharashtra govern-ment to enforce the Act’s no-child-left-behind provisions will certainly impose some strain on the teachers’ community. But it will undoubtedly relieve primary and upper primary children of the burden of stress and anxiety which prompted the suicide of two pre-secondary school children, leaving the state’s parental community in a state of shock.
Anupama Patil (Mumbai)
Chile quake tremor
When the distant latin American country Chile (pop. 16 million) was hit by a devastating earthquake on February 27 this year, little did anyone expect that it would affect the students’ community in Maharashtra, and Pune in particular. Chile’s earthquake has resulted in a major shortage of notebooks in Pune and prices have risen by over 30 percent on the eve of commencement of the new academic year. Stationery suppliers in the city attribute this development to almost 40 percent of the raw material required for the manufacture of school exercise books being imported from Chile.
“Paper pulp which cost US$450 (Rs.20,250) per tonne some months ago is now being imported by paper mills at $800 (Rs.36,000) per tonne,” says a spokesperson of the Indian Paper Manufacturers Association. Adds Rajesh Nahar, the owner of a paper mill in Chakan, a town in the Pune-Nashik industrial belt: “We have been importing paper pulp from Chile. But the earthquake has crippled the mills back there and this has had a cascading effect on at least 40 paper mills in Maharashtra.”
Not surprisingly, for the city’s parental community already grappling with 16 percent-plus food prices inflation, this additional burden is onerous. “A notebook priced at Rs.10 last year is now sold for Rs.13 and even at this price, availability is uncertain. This has not only imposed additional financial strain on household budgets, but will also create problems for students as they will not have enough notebooks. I want the state government to look into the matter,” says Pramila Deshmukh, a Pune-based social activist.
The Chile earthquake, which also triggered a tsunami (tidal wave) that killed 400 people, hit the country’s pulp and paper producers hardest since most of Chile’s pulp mills are clustered close to Concepcion, the epicentre of the quake. Consequently, production of pulp and paper products dropped by 60 percent while physical sales fell nearly 41 percent, according to the Chile government.
However, sources in the paper products industry in India expect Chile’s production to stabilise within the next six months. According to Anil Birla, one of India’s largest vendors of Chilean pulp, Maharashtra’s paper mills are particularly dependent upon raw materials from Chile. “My forecast is notebook prices will stabilise after four to five months,” says Birla.
That’s no solace to parents since notebooks have to be bought now. Fortunately, schools and colleges are also seized of the situation. Joseph D’Souza, an administrative officer with an English medium school in Pune, says that teachers may take this unprece-dented situation into consideration and decrease the quantum of written work in the first half of the new academic year.
Pune’s student population is estimated at 500,000-plus. And assuming that the number of exercise/note books used by each student is 25 per year, this translates into a requirement of at least 12.5 million notebooks, each of 200 pages. “Right now the availability is only half of the requirement,” says Ganesh Acharya, a stationery shop owner in the city’s academic nerve-centre.
Yes indeed. We’re all connected now.
Huned Contractor (Pune)