The Centre announced a liberalisation of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s affiliation-granting regime on Thursday, with Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar saying that the state government alone would henceforth certify a school's infrastructure while the CBSE would inspect only learning outcomes.
This, he added, does away with duplication in infrastructure inspection both by the state and Centre.
This apart, all applications for affiliation of schools to CBSE would now be online — for greater transparency — and each school would have to mandatorily have sports activities.
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Schools affiliated to the CBSE would have to make full fee disclosures — with no hidden costs —and permit students to procure the school uniform and shoes from any shop of their choice, Mr. Javadekar added.
The sole role of the CBSE in granting affiliation, he said, would be to assess the learning outcomes of schools — the number and training of their teachers up to Class-8 and the academic performance.
“We are bringing transparency to earlier systems. The CBSE has 20,700 schools all over the country. They receive 2000-2500 applications each year to open new schools. The system till now was strange.
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“One required an NOC from the state government. All documents were sent there and also checked here. We have now decided that district education officers will authenticate the land, safety and other infrastructure-related matters. The CBSE will not re-check these. The CBSE will undertake a new inspection: that of learning outcomes,” Mr. Javadekar told reporters in New Delhi.
“We have removed unnecessary duplication at the state and central levels. We will only inspect learning outcomes. A school asks the CBSE's permission in Class-9. We will look into how they have fared from Class-1 to 8. How many teachers do they have? How are they trained? How are their results? How are they in sports? The main purpose of education is achievements. But we have been looking at infrastructure. The state will look at infrastructure now and we only at outcomes.”
“Another reform is that we will take the whole process online. All applications will be disposed of that year itself. Till now, 8000 applications were pending since 2007. This year, we have disposed of 8000 pending cases. We worked on the basis of merit and transparency,” the minister added.