Education sector to see sweeping reforms

The recent appointment of Commissioner of School Education for the first time has raised eyebrows from several quarters about the sudden drastic changes in the School Education Department, which has already started revamping the whole administration since the beginning of this year.

Four major changes have been made by the department. Accordingly, amendments have been made in the functioning of the State Council of Educational Research and Training, which is the main State-run agency to look into the school curriculum.  In addition, the Directorate of School Education also made major reconstruction of administrative setup in the Directorate of Matriculations Schools by increasing the duties of educational officers.

Similarly, the authorities have also strengthened the State Fees Determination Committee by giving additional powers to its members. Likewise, the directorate also made recent announcement that the non-government organisation (ISRO) could also involve in the school activities to improve teaching process. While a few of the reforms have been accepted by the academicians, some of them were opposed.

Currently, the whole Education Department comes under four major directorates such as the Directorate of Elementary Education, the Directorate of Matriculation Schools, the Directorate of School Education and the Directorate of Government Examinations, which is directly monitored by the Principal Secretary to the government.

“However, the government felt the need to appoint an IAS cadre as Commissioner to coordinate the directorates for better monitoring and for improving the quality of education of the stakeholders,” says a senior official from the School Education Department. He said as a major structural reform, the administrative setup of the department has been restructured at field-level and a clear three-tier system has been put in place with due delegation of powers to monitor all types of schools effectively. “This has replaced several parallel administrative structures with differing territorial jurisdiction overlapping with each other,” he added.

Principal Secretary of School Education Pradep Yadav said the Commissioner would supervise all the directorates in the department, do field inspection and suggest ways to improve the quality of education.

He said that in order to improve the regulatory and supervisory mechanism over the schools, the commissioner would also enforce guidelines besides supervision over implementation of various schemes. The government move to appoint Education Commissioner was hailed by the academicians, saying that it would further improve the education system since immediate communication with the secretary was not possible and many issues could not be taken to him. “The basic purpose of appointing Education Commissioner is to co-ordinate with even small authorities in all the directorates. This will not only help the officials take immediate decisions, but also get the issues sorted out very soon,” retired headmaster K Natarajan, who worked in a government high school at Chromepet said.

He pointed out that reporting to the Education Commissioner is much easier than reporting to the Principal Secretary and, therefore, it would be much easy for any school management to take up any issue with him. “Instead of going to the District Education Office or the Secretariat, the Commissioner, as per his duty, would visit the schools,” he added.

At present, about 70,000 private schools are functioning in the state with a little over 64 lakh students studying in those institutions, which account for 50 per cent of the total school students in Tamil Nadu. “Managing these private schools is a herculean task for the Education Department. However, in order to ensure effective monitoring of schools, quality of education and control of mushrooming of unrecognised schools, major structural reforms in administrative setup were taken up,” a senior official from the Directorate of Matriculation said. According to him, the posts of inspector of matriculation schools were renamed as District Educational Officers and the territorial jurisdiction of District Educational Officers was revised in such a manner that the District Educational Officers had limited number of schools to monitor irrespective of category of schools.

The Chief Educational Officers have also been delegated with additional powers for the effective monitoring of the schools. He will only accord recognition to the schools and grant permission for starting additional sections. The officer will also monitor the implementation of admission under 25 per cent reservations as per the provisions of the RTE Act, 2009 in non-minority self-financing schools.

In addition, the officer would initiate action against schools which violate the provisions of the RTE Act and would also recommend proposal for opening of Matriculation schools, upgradation of Matriculation schools into matriculation higher secondary schools and closure of schools in public interest.“These amendments will help the students as well as the parents ensure quality education from private schools,” K Manikkam, a member of the TN Matriculation School Association, said. He said the new rule would also ensure closure of unrecognised schools, which is increasing every year.

Non-government organisations (NGOs) and corporate companies could now enter any government schools to offer services at any time as the government has relaxed the voluntary service norms.

At present, the NGOs, who are interested in working for any government schools, should apply online and wait for the approval of the Chief Educational Officers or higher authorities for days or months.

The School Education Department move to relax NGO service norms comes after request from volunteer groups and individuals involved in social activities.

Director of School Education Kannappan said NGOs had to wait indefinitely to receive permission from the authorities to work in government schools to enhance learning outcomes without any financial commitment on the part of the school.

He said that in order to simplify the procedure, it has been decided to authorise the headmasters concerned to permit NGOs and volunteers after identifying the utility of such intervention in improving school-related activities. Opposing the move, the TN Teachers’ Association said the new initiative would affect students and teachers as the volunteers would often come to the schools and disturb the regular activities. “The NGOs should be used only to develop infrastructure of the school. If they are allowed to do other activities it will leave a big question mark of the teachers’ creditability,” association president P K Ilamaran said.

The State Council of Educational Research and Training, functioning under the Directorate of School Education, is involved in developing curriculum, syllabus, textbooks, supplementary materials, newsletters, journals, educational kits, multimedia digital contents and related literature.

A senior official, who held the post of SCERT Director earlier, said unlike earlier, now the SCERT would have five divisions - curriculum studies, educational research, survey and assessment, teacher education, ICT and programme and monitoring. The division of curriculum studies will look after the development of curriculum, syllabus, textbooks and additional text materials. It will have nine sub-divisions headed by five deputy directors, 10 senior lecturers and 17 lecturers. The educational research, survey and assessment division will conduct periodic state-level and national assessment of the learning process. It will also conduct qualitative researches; study factors influencing the performance of students and design a need-specific teacher training programme.

Likewise, the division of teacher education, leadership and management will focus on studying the emerging trends in teacher preparation. It will identify motivated educators and senior academicians and make arrangements for their international exposure.

Venkatesan, who is a part of SCERT curriculum team, said that more officials would give a boost to the curriculum system since the government is planning to modify the syllabus according to the latest need. “Improvement will be on regular basis in improving the quality of textbooks,” he added.