Following the airing of a new clip showing the
inability of children of a government school in Dhenkanal district in answering
few fundamental questions, education officers have directed school principals
to not allow media personnel into school premises and even file police
complaints if required to prevent entry without permission. While the issue of
poor learning outcomes is a serious one and the government must be asked
questions about the same, media personnel barging into schools and thrusting a
mic on an unassuming child is surely not the way to go about it.
Highlighting
the concern
That school education is an important pillar of any
society is well known. Equally well known is the fact that school education in
most parts of India is poor in quality as well as quantity. Despite the best of
intentions, inadequate number of teachers, ill-trained teachers, curricular
lacunae, pathetic infrastructure, etc, has marred school education, including
that in Odisha. The responsibility of the fourth estate of the democracy lies
in constantly questioning the government of the day about measures that are
being taken to fill such gaps. Such reportage, highlighting the concerns have
made people and powers that be sit up and take notice.
That said, the education quality, the achieving of
learning outcomes cannot be tested by reporters and journalists by asking a
random few questions to any school kid. There are several good reasons for it,
the first being that there is a due statistical process to evaluate these
outcomes and sampling by picking any random child won’t provide the true
picture. Doing that would border on sensationalism to put it mildly. Secondly, there
is the issue of ethics. Does the child, a minor, provide consent to be
interviewed and for it to be aired? Would there be an easy way for the video to
be taken off the internet if in future the child or her parents would demand
so? Would the reporter ask similar question to, say a top bureaucrat’s child? Thirdly,
school is meant to be a safe space. It is ideally meant to foster growth in a
non-threatening environment. The presence of any third party encroaching that
space does not augur well for children at large.
School
education in Odisha
The Ministry of Education recently introduced the
Performance Grading Index (PGI) for schools in the country which evaluates
schools on five parameters – Learning Outcomes & Quality, Access,
Infrastructure and Facilities, Equity and Governance Processes. For the year
2019-20, the latest which has been published, Odisha figured in Grade I along
with states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
There has been an increase in its grade from 2017-18. No guesses that following
the 5T transformation of schools, the improvement has been in the
infrastructure and facilities domain.
Odisha scored relatively low in learning outcomes
& quality, the domain that deals with standard of students in language and
mathematics (the bone of contention in the case) in standard 3, 5 and 8 in
government and aided schools. In the PGI, average scores in both language and
mathematics declined as the class progressed from 3 to 8.
As per Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of
2021, student enrolment in Odisha in private schools is increasing; more and
more children are taking private tuitions (nearly 15 % jump from 2020), a mere
36% household reported that they received learning material when schools were
closed during the pandemic. Earlier ASER
report of 2018 showed that a mere 35% children in Standard III were able to
read Standard II level text in government schools while it was 64.5% in private
schools. When it comes to arithmetic, 23.8% children in Class V of government
schools could do a division meant for Standard II while in private the
percentage was 43.2.
Ask questions
– the right ones
The issue of not making spectacle of poor learning
outcomes applies to ministers and bureaucrats too. Only a few days ago, the
concerned minister during a school visit directed deducting salary of a
headmistress due to poor response by a student. The whole 'catching by surprise' plank does not augur well with children in a school. The disallowing media person
into schools is also seen in Odisha in conjunction of them being kept out of
the secretariat, SCB medical college, etc, the latter being highly condemnable;
yet which cannot be conflated with the issue of minor school children.
Not allowing media personnel to enter schools should
not deter them from raising issues about school education. There are several
studies starting from ASER to NITI Aayog to Ministry of Education which
regularly survey schools which provide information about state of affairs.
Teacher shortage is a massive concern and media should highlight that. RTI
tools should be employed to learn more about quality of teachers, appointments,
irregularities, etc. Nothing stops media houses, number of which are
mushrooming each day, from investigating multitude of issues that plague school
education. That said, these are more effortful processes as compared to asking
few questions of mathematics to the unassuming school children.
