Javadekar proposes major changes in school education

Union minister Prakash Javadekar today said major changes have been brought about to improve the school education system in the country.
Inaugurating the North-Eastern Region workshop on 'Innovations and Best Practises in School Education' organised by the HRD ministry here, he listed the changes as allowing detainment in the same class and reverting to examinations for assessing academic progress of students, besides updating NCERT textbooks.
The Human Resources Development Minister said a student would be given two chances to pass, with one being in the first examination in March and the second one in June.
"If he/she fails there, he/she will be detained in the same class," he said.

The second major change "to the joy of parents" is making the class ten board exam mandatory for all students, he said.
Explaining the decision on detainment, the minister said "We have taken a very important decision and we will take a call on it this month."

"We had a meeting of education ministers from all the states, wherein those from 25 states lamented that they were finding it difficult to improve the quality of education without examinations.
"On their demand, we unanimously decided that the right to decide on detention will be left to the states and it will be done anytime soon," Javadekar said.

He further added that as NCERT books have not been revised since the last ten years, the HRD ministry has invited suggestions from teachers, parents and all other stakeholders to make changes in the lessons or certain paragraphs in the books.
Stating that benchmark and learning capacity outcomes have been introduced for every class and monitored every year, the BJP leader said handbooks have been introduced for teachers to monitor every child and thus reach the benchmark.
The government officials of north eastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura; NGOs, school principals and teachers took part in the two-day workshop.