Imparting good quality education to all the children of the country is the biggest challenge India is facing today and to address this , we need good infrastructure”, emphasised Mr Upkar Singh, DPI Schools, Chandigarh Administration. He further suggested that teachers should adopt the role of partners in learning to raise the standard of quality of education in the country.
He was addressing a cross section of stakeholders like School Principals and teachers, representatives from the industry and the NGOs from the North at a Conclave on School Excellence organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Northern Region at its headquarters in Sector 31 A in Chandigarh.
Mr Singh further highlighted that “Bringing underprivileged kids to schools and retaining them is a challenge and the Administration is taking many steps to encourage them. These include mobilisation schemes, Mid Day Meals, Exposure visits, provision of uniforms, textbooks, stipends and scholarships etc. Due to our efforts, School Dropout rate in elementary education in Chandigarh is down to just .00004 %. We are also trying to make education interactive and activity based rather than monotonous teaching”.
“To promote primary and upper primary education in Punjab, we are aggressively opening the Adarsh Schools in rural areas of Punjab under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode, under which 24 schools are operational already. The state Govt is providing land at nominal lease. The capital cost is borne by Govt and Industry in equal ratio while the Govt is bearing 70 % of the running costs”, shared Mr Hussan Lal, Secretary Education, Govt. of Punjab.
Mr Amit Kaushik, Managing Director, Educomp Infrastructure and School Management Ltd, Gurgaon, shared that “The present time is the most exciting time to be in the education sector in India as a lot of changes are taking place which will transform the educational landscape of the country soon. Education in India, particularly elementary education, needs to catch up with the changing needs of society. The schools of today will have to focus increasingly on diversity and teaching children how to live in a globalised world”.
Mr Sameer Goel, Chairman, CII Chandigarh Council, raised the issue of gaps between the industry requirements and school curriculum. He felt that the classroom was not changing as rapidly as the workplace. “School will have to train their students to become leaders in industry,” he opined.
Mr Rajender Guleria, Co-chairman, Special Task Force on Skills and Education, CII NR, mooted the idea of private school teachers sharing the best practices of their schools with government school teachers. He also suggested that each private school should adopt one government school for such a purpose.
He further stressed “if India is to fully reap the benefits of its demographic dividend in a globalised world, its youth has to be provided with not just education, but quality education, which makes them creative and teaches them how to work in teams, how to deal with stress and face the challenges of life in good spirit and other non – cognitive skills key to their personal growth and that of the country’s growth.
“CII has been continuously taking various initiatives in the field of education to help accelerate holistic growth in this sector. Today’s Conclave is one such initiative. It is highly imperative to give due importance to the vocational education in today’s scenario where industry is facing crunch of skilled labour. There is a need to rapidly develop vocational teachers and infrastructure to meet this challenge. Vocational education should not be treated as inferior to academic education”, shared Mr Pikender Pal Singh, Regional Director, CII NR.
CII’s Institute of Quality, Bangalore has been advocating the delivery of Quality of education in the nation for over a decade. In pursuance of this goal, CII IQ, has organised this School Excellence Conclave”, Mr A Subramanian, Sr. Counsellor, CII Institute of Quality, Bangalore.
The conclave which was attended by over 100 participants witnessed experts like Dr. A.K. Sharma, Former Director, NCERT, Mr. Vijay Chadda, CEO, Bharti Foundation, Mr. Bipin Bhadran, COO & Director, Education Design Architecture, Mr. Winston Gomez, Principal, Ambassador School, Mr. Julian Egbert, Principal, O P Jindal Modern School, Hisar, Mr. P C Sharma, Principal, Kendriya Vidyalaya OCF, Chandigarh .
Had Mahatma Gandhi not been murdered at the behest of his own people & had his Policy Of Trusteeship been adhered to in its right perspective by his followers; who became Rulers of the nation; there would have been total literacy in this country by now.
It is really futile to talk of good quality education in this country, wherein on every Branch a Voluture is sitting, rest any sensible person can imagine the result thereof—dr.amritgaur