Community can improve school education

Prakash Javadekar giving away prize to a student at the Isha Foundation on Saturday. Isha founder Jaggi Vasudev is in the picture.–Photo: Special Arrangement

Community participation plays a key role in improving school education, and the new National Education Policy will provide thrust to it, Union Minister for Human Resources Development Prakash Javadekar said here on Saturday.

Inaugurating Isha Vidhya’s education conference at Isha Foundation, he said communities across the country had supported education, including several instances of building schools and providing houses to teachers.

But a disconnect crept in after Independence, and the new National Education Policy looked at restoring the connect.

Asserting that improving the quality of education was no longer a political agenda, but the national agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party government, the Minister said he would hold discussions with all stakeholders on November 10 and was open to ideas.

In the last 70 years, the reach of education had improved but not the quality. Therefore, this would be a major focus area, he added.

RTE Act

Mr. Javadekar said that under the Right to Education Act, the learning outcomes were yet to be defined. His government was engaged in defining learning outcomes and it would release those in the next three months. This would usher in accountability.

Isha Foundation founder Jaggi Vasudev said that promoting enterprise and business in education would usher in quality. Policing would not improve education; it would only breed mediocrity.

It would not be wrong to make it mandatory that parents spent two to three days a year in their children’s school, as their involvement too would help improve the quality of education.

‘In the last 70 years, the reach of education had improved but not the quality’