How Far Has the School Scenario Changed in Recent Times?
Now- a- days people are much worried about the changes in school curricula. For example, the recent decision of the Central Board of Secondary Education to do away with 10th standard examination – that once considered being very sacrosanct- has been received with shock by many. The Kerala school system also has been in a flux of sweeping curricular changes for more than a decade. What is the true nature of these changes? Are these changes influenced by the system itself or by outside forces? Have the teachers, headmasters and the general public imbibed the real spirit of curricular changes? Is there a shift in the very purpose of schooling itself? What will be the nature of schooling in the coming decades? Are we going in the right direction?
To raise more questions and search for answers you are requested to have a revisit of the school scenario in terms of the following four sets of components.
1. Physical appearance of the school, buildings, facilities, profile of students and teachers, management, cost of education, interest of various stake holders etc.
2.Curriculum and syllabus, teaching- learning approaches, assessment practices, technological inputs for learning, importance of co- curricular activities etc.
3. Planning and implementation of lessons, students’ role in learning, student- teacher relationship, professional development of teachers, etc.
4. Parents’ involvement, community participation, local bodies and government initiatives etc.
Have a close look at them taking at least one component each from the above four areas. Prepare your report and share your findings.
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No.1: How Far Has the School Scenario Changed in Recent Times?
ReplyDeleteEducation has been a matter of concern for a lot of
people in our country for the past several decades. There have been
several efforts to make education more effective and less tedious
especially at the school level. The education system needs to aim at the overall
development of the growing individual so that he/she becomes capable
of leading a satisfying and productive life, while also becoming
useful to society and humanity as a whole. For a long time,
our attention was on content, though there were heated discussions on
teaching methods and the effectiveness of classroom transaction. We are now waking up to the need for paying attention to the process as well as the content.
Today we have introduced concepts like learner-centered education, activity
orientation, and environmental based and life related education. The District Primary
Education Programme was started in 1994 and the primary
objective of the programme were :-
• To provide access for all children to primary education according to
national norms;
• To ensure retention for all children in primary classes; and
• To effect a substantial improvement in quality of primary education.
This ensured that the child is no longer a passive listener to the
teachers’ lectures. The child became an active participant in the teaching /learning process by
doing projects, organising seminars and quizzes and so on. Children
are not always confined to the classrooms. And the teacher’s role
changed from that of transferring knowledge to that of a guide.
An important part of our education system is the
evaluation system. Evaluation of students has always been through
written examinations. This essentially meant that the student had to
memorize whatever he/she is supposed to learn and reproduce it on the
answer paper during the specified time. This has several drawbacks: a
child who is ill on that day could perform below par; the system
basically tests the ability of the student to memorize and recall
material; Worse is that a spirit of competition develops, very
strangely, among the parents! This often leads to the children being
driven to score higher ranks and sometimes even to suicides. A scheme
for Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation, which includes evaluation
by self, by peers and by teachers, has been adopted. This evaluates
not just what the student has memorized, but also her communication
skills, leadership qualities and other abilities. Another move that was started in the education
sector was the IT@School Project. The objective of this project was to
introduce Information Technology to children. After the launch of
Edusat, the IT@School Project started a new programme called Virtual
Classroom Technology on Edusat for Rural Schools, abbreviated to
VICTERS. Thus the state has now reached a situation where
the child is made to actively participate in the learning process and
his overall evaluation is done continuously and not just at the end of
the year. Computers have been made available in all schools
Thus, the classrooms in Kerala are undergoing a rapid transformation
and getting ready to accept more changes.