‘CENTRE SHOULD ALLOT 6% OF GDP TO EDUCATION’
Only 5% of children get access to quality education: Education Minister
NEW DELHI: Deputy CM and Education Minister, Manish Sisodia, asked for a new law to be made to allocate 6 per cent of national GDP to education.
Speaking at the Special Meeting of Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) convened by the Union HRD Ministry to discuss and finalise the National Education Policy, Sisodia was criticial about some aspects about the new education policy. He pointed out that the preamble to the policy should ideally focus on ‘Providing Good Quality Education through Government schools” which should be the responsibility of the government and not encourage Private Education Board as it will encourage private learning, which defeats the purpose of keeping government education at par with private education.
Holding the government responsible for failure to provide quality education to all, Sisodia said, “Only 5% of children get access to quality education, the rest 95% have been getting an average quality education. It needs to change.”
While Sisodia was appreciative of some aspects of the new education policy he said it lacked proper direction.
In a rhetorical question Sisodia said, “If you are thinking of abolishing rote learning system in the current education system and the introduction of critical thinking in the classrooms it is nice but where is the road map for it?”
Highlighting that Education in India is highly regulated and the new policy is a way to increase the regulation he said, “Instead of introducing more regulations in the education system, it needs direction like the idea of introducing ‘ethics’ and ‘Social Emotional learning’ which already exists in ‘Happiness Curriculum’ of Delhi Government schools and the response is great.”
“If education is buried under such regulations the highly regulated will become even more regulated and the crux of the matter — quality education — will be lost,” he added.