Catholic schools raise voice against NEP
As many as 150 catholic schools of the city and 565 of the state, part of the Catholic Association for Education have united to raise their voice against the National Education Policy (NEP) 2016.
“We are expressing our fears through a memorandum. The policy makes yoga compulsory and seeks to promote Sanskrit. While we do teach yoga in our schools, we don’t want it to be made compulsory. Same is the case with promoting Sanskrit. All this seems there is an attempt to communalise education,” said the principal of a
city catholic school, who did not want to be named.
She added, “If the policy is implemented, the government will have the power to transfer teachers from even private schools between states, the way bank employees are transferred. It will also have control over recruiting teachers, this way where will our autonomy as educational institutions be,” she asked.
We do not want a national curriculum for the subjects of Maths, Science and English as the NEP has proposed, pointing that the quality of education may suffer. “Every board has its own level of difficulty, we don’t want a common curriculum,” she said.
Reverend Bishop Elias Gonsalves, President of the Western Region Catholic Association for Education, said, “The NEP has proposed two levels of education in terms of difficulty – level A and level B. Those who take level B, the one of lower difficulty, will face challenges in pursuing higher studies.”
He objected to teachers being subjected to eligibility tests every five years as proposed in the NEP, saying that it would be like a sword hanging over their heads. “Teachers are developing cold feet,” he said, adding that this might lead to corruption.
“We want representation at the state and centre for drafting the policy,” he said.
Father George Athaid, who has been driving the campaign, said that the policy seems to be oriented to centralise, control and communalise education, adding that the matter is being pursued at the national level by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI).
The association has submitted a memorandum with their objections to the Governor C. Vidyasagar Rao and plan to meet the CM and state education minister Vinod Tawde soon.