A public consultation meeting, designed to discuss larger educational issues and gather inputs to frame a new policy, seemed to lose direction with stakeholders discussing the existing issues in the private professional colleges.
While a section of important stakeholders such as MLAs were missing, a handful of housewives, workers, doctors, students, teachers and others from different walks of life participated at the block level consultation process on new education policy at the Oulgaret Municipality.
R. Saravanan, president of Democratic Youth Federation of India, Puducherry Unit, said themes and questions were designed by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development as to favour or elicit views on the proposed idea of bringing public private partnership in higher education based on the new education policy.
Participants were keen on airing current issues pertaining to professional colleges.
K. Vijayamurthy of Reddiarpalayam said adequate information campaign was not conducted before convening the consultation meeting. Only select stakeholders participated in the meeting and discussions mostly centred on issues relating to private colleges in the Union Territory.
Themes of consultation for higher education are focussed on governance reforms for quality in higher education, ranking of higher educational institutions and accreditations, improving the quality of regulation, pace setting roles of central institutions, improving State public universities and integrating skill development in higher education. The consultation also aimed at promoting online courses, addressing regional disparity and bridging gender and social gaps.
Themes of consultation for school education dwelt on reforming of school examination system, revamping teacher education for creating quality teachers, school standards, school assessment and school management systems. The consultation also dealt with other issues such as- ethics, physical education, arts and crafts and child health.
Oulgaret Municipality Commissioner M.S. Ramesh said, “Earlier the national education policy was drafted by a few resource persons and was followed by others. It was actually a top-down approach which was time-consuming. Now the Union government proposed to develop new education policy aiming to cater quality education to the changing dynamics. As per the directions of Union Ministry of Human Resource Development now, we conduct consultation process with local people on the education policy. It is grassroot-level consultations.”
The School Education Directorate conducted meetings at 98 village panchayats and the members of School Management Committee deliberated on ensuring learning outcomes in elementary education, reforming the school examination system, school standards, school management system and promotion of languages. At present the consultation process was held at block level in 15 places in the Union Territory.
As the last leg of the process, at the State-level meeting, the Member of Parliament, Education Minister, Collectors and Director of School Education will discuss the issues before the end of September.
The consultation also aimed at promoting online courses, addressing regional disparity and bridging gender, social gaps
