Sreelatha Menon: Testing times in Kerala

EAR TO THE GROUND

Admissions to engineering and medical courses are the ultimate dream for many in India, especially in Kerala. Hence the moment a student enters Class XI, tuitions follow.

While the days are spent in schools, the evenings, and even nights in some cases, are spent in coaching centres. The Class XII marks don't really count in the present scheme of things. Entrance marks decide a student's destiny.

A committee set up by the Kerala government has recommended that school marks will henceforth carry as much weight as common entrance tests. Once the government accepts the recommendation, it will create a bank of 3,000-5,000 questions for both Class XII and entrance tests.

So the coaching centres will lose their significance. The idea is to equip schools to prepare students to perform equally well in school examinations and entrance tests, says a member of the committee, RVG Menon.

But teachers in Kerala say it will only lead to two years of memorising a set of questions and answers, take creativity and enterprise out of students and make private schools indispensable.

The way forward, they say, is to provide more options in higher education rather than limiting science to a set of 5,000 questions. No school in Kerala offers subjects like commercial art, design, dance and music, or preparatory courses for careers in architecture and design. Not that other states in India do.

While there is total lack of enterprise in options offered to students, the only inventiveness the governments and academics of this state have been exercising is in changing systems. The outcome of all these changes has been to create avenues for making money.

Nine years ago, the government decided to separate Class XI and Class XII from colleges. Since then, students, after completing Class X, have been struggling for admission to the scarce seats in schools. Parents have been paying through their nose for admissions and the only relief offered is by parallel colleges and the open school system.

It has meant money for the government when it allows a higher secondary section in a private school and it has meant money for schools as they take donations for admissions.

The latest innovation planned by the government is a single-window system for admissions to higher secondary classes from this year. This government monopoly on admissions to higher secondary classes would mean creating thousands of seats in schools, both private and government-aided, and it would mean crores of rupees flowing into government coffers.

It would also mean huge donations for the schools concerned as even government-aided schools would be allowed to start these grades in a self-financing format.

A government that did not create enough higher secondary seats in nine years after delinking the higher secondary education from colleges can now provide guaranteed admissions through the single window system.

The government wants to implement the single window for degree courses too. Both moves would weed out the parallel college system in the state.

These colleges, essentially low-cost tutorials providing employment to educated youths as well as tuitions to poor students who fail to get admissions in regular colleges and schools, will soon be a thing of the past as the government will have monopoly on school and college admissions. The only solace for the poor student would be the open school system, which fortunately the government has no plan to scrap.