Result Orientation

For the umpteenth time perhaps, the state government has taken "a serious view" of the poor results of its schools. According to a report from Jammu, the education department has decided to "punish" the non-performing government teachers across the province, of course, after assessing school-wise results. Similar initiatives had, indeed, been taken in Kashmir division as well where in quite some cases the "defaulters" were punished with even premature retirements. Many of such teachers were shifted from the schools while the annual increments of several others were withheld. Even after the government took the steps to improve the performance of government-run institutions, particularly at the high and higher secondary school levels, the overall impact of the initiatives reportedly did not percolate to all the levels. In Jammu division, the results of 10th class announced recently did not show a single position among the first 10 being bagged by government schools. The pass percentage of their students has been even worse. In fact, these results may well be deceptive as these cannot be relied upon as faithful representation of actual performance of the educational institutions managed by the government.

Instances may be aplenty where even a cursory interaction with their students leaves one shell shocked as they fail to answer even rudimentary questions. Undoubtedly, the education standard of the entire state has shown a marked decline over the decades with the state authorities almost totally unconcerned at the disturbing scenario. Save for some occasional noise to revamp the department with a view to improving its performance, no serious effort has ever been made to translate the rhetoric into a reality with which hinges the future of the society as a whole.

Obviously, it could not be just at the spur of the moment that results thrown up at annual examinations dismayed the authorities. For decades on end, it has been a regular feature.

There can be no denying that hundreds of crores of rupees have been spent on education sector. The investment has gone into creating and expanding the infrastructure, manning educational institutions with well qualified and trained teachers and providing them with latest facilities. The emoluments and perks offered to the teaching and other staff can be termed as reasonably attractive. In spite of all that, there is a glaring disconnect between the input and the output, or to put it directly, between the investment and the results. Due to this disturbing mismatch, most parents, especially in urban areas, have been showing a definite preference for fairly expensive public schools, whose results have earned them a niche in popular estimation. It is an open secret that parents keen to give better education to their children would not mind an overnight wait outside a public school in the city for obtaining an admission form. Apart from the security reasons, the large scale migration of people from rural to urban areas in the valley during the past one and a half decades is attributed to the keenness of parents to provide for better education of their wards. Even then, the vast majority of people, particularly in villages, have no option but to have their wards enrolled with government-run schools where absenteeism of teachers has assumed an epidemic dimension, if frequent press reports about it were to be believed, even as the department has a huge army of officials at various levels to enforce punctuality. Not long ago, the PDP-led coalition government had announced a decision that every minister and top bureaucrat would adopt a school for improving its qualitative performance.

Its follow up is believed to be embarrassing, if not shameful. Luckily, the incumbent chief minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, who also holds the education portfolio, has declared education as a priority sector for holistic development. Believed to be a go-getter, one would expect him to initiate concrete steps to revamp the moribund, albeit administratively top-heavy, department. Apart from addressing the rampant trade-unionism among teachers, which has been playing havoc with the moth-eaten edifice, he would need to introduce an element of result-orientation at every level of the department to bring about a qualitative improvement in its performance. Indeed, the government can be less interested in providing for some of the basic needs of the people, but it certainly cannot afford to be callously indifferent with education considered to be the greatest resource of any society.

The article is an editorial from KO Archives and was originally published on May 24,2005