New education

A play-based and non-didactic approach to primary education

Anurag Behar
 

Vibrant classrooms with engaged teachers are an integral part of the New Education Policy vision

Puducherry has systematically gone about starting pre-primary classes in all its government primary schools. Anyone you ask there, they point to this levelling of the playing field as a key reason for enrolment increases in these schools, and the drop on that metric in private schools. Many teachers in Puducherry, on their own initiative, have expanded the “play-based» and “non-didactic» pedagogical approach of pre-primary classes to primary classes. Both these matters, on which action is visible in Puducherry, pre-empts the draft National Education Policy 2019 (NEP).

Gomathy was teaching class 3 at the Savarirayalu Government Primary School in Puducherry. The students were involved in addition of 3- and 4-digit numbers, working in five groups of five students each. Each group had some locally made (or very low-cost) pedagogical aids to help with the exercise. Observation made it clear that each group had a mix of students based on their comfort with the exercise. Gomathy ensured that students who were at ease with the problems did not dominate the proceedings and helped others who were struggling.

Energy was flowing in the class, with kids racing to their teacher for more problem sheets after finishing one. Gomathy explained how the school’s teachers had collectively decided to adopt a “cohort-teacher» approach, meaning the same teacher teaches a cohort of students all subjects as they progress from class to class, till they move out from primary school. This system is very useful in the early classes, when the basis of learning is primarily the relationship of trust and care between students and teachers. Learning from experience, they had tweaked this system to ensure that no cohort of students is put at a disadvantage by the cohort-teacher’s limitations.

Such vibrant, adequately resourced classrooms, with engaged teachers who have an empathetic relationship with their students, are an integral part of the NEP’s vision. So is the importance of empowerment of schools to take key educational decisions. It also highlights the centrality of the role of teachers, and the importance of “professional learning communities» of teachers.

Gomathy surprised me when she told me that she had translated Chapter 14 (National Research Foundation) of the NEP into Tamil. Her initiative and competence are not limited to school classrooms. She was as a part of a collective civil society exercise to translate the entire 484 pages of the NEP to Tamil. Later in the evening at a consultation meeting on the NEP, I saw the result of this remarkable effort—neatly printed Tamil versions of the Policy. About 40 people were involved in this effort, most of them government school teachers.

Over the course of the next three days, I was in three such meetings across the country, attended mostly by teachers and activists for public education. These were lively discussions. There were several clarifications, many constructive suggestions, a few disagreements, and a widespread acknowledgement of the much-needed transformations of Indian education that the NEP lays out. With hundreds of such points of feedback, the NEP in its final form will surely be significantly improved.

In sharp contrast to such constructive engagement is the reaction of some educationists. Many have read non-existent sections and intentions into the draft. As an example, many have seen the horrors of commercialization and privatization writ in the NEP, despite the painstaking effort of the committee to underline the importance of public education. Others are exhibiting narcissism of small differences. Both sets are being irresponsible to the very causes that they have fought for most of their lives. Because most of these causes, fought and advocated by almost everyone committed to a vibrant public education system, including these educationists, are now integral to the NEP.

Such educationists also seem to be losing sight of the fundamental nature of public policymaking—always an exercise in negotiation and balance between contending perspectives. Education in our country is a tricky battlefield. Any policy initiative that manages to stick to basic principles and succeeds in avoiding egregious mistakes or surrendering to fringe interests is definitely a success. The Kasturirangan committee has done more; while avoiding such mistakes with remarkable diligence, it has actually created a blueprint for what most in education have for decades wished for.

The final word goes to one of the wisest and most competent of public administrators in the country, who wryly commented at the end of a consultation meeting with a large group of powerful people in education, “If so many people with deep vested interests are dead against the NEP, it must be absolutely the right thing to do; let’s implement it immediately.»

Until our public intellectuals of whatever hue, liberal, left, centrist or right leaning, are more thoughtful about the reality of policymaking, are alive to the political moment, and are intellectually non-partisan, policymakers will continue to be very suspicious of experts. And that is not good for society in the long run.

Source of the article: https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/opinion-a-play-based-and-non-didactic-approach-to-primary-education-1563384928852.html

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Rab Butler revolutionised education in 1944. Let’s do it again

Noticias

Por: theguardian.com/Sir Tim Brighouse/04-04-2018

Our school system is broken and only a radical new education act for the 21st century will fix it.

the last 100 years there have been two defining education acts – Butler’s in 1944 and Baker’s in 1988. They represent two distinct chapters in England’s educational story.

Tim Brighouse
Tim Brighouse was the schools commissioner for London. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

The first witnessed new schools, colleges and curriculum innovation, especially in the arts, as well as new youth and career services. Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberalism underpinned Baker’s 1988 reform bill, which meant a prescribed national curriculum and tougher accountability, along with diversity in school provision and autonomy.

Now once again we doubt our schools – and it isn’t simply exams or test results we question. Terrorist attacks? Introduce the Prevent agenda and promote “British values”. Fall behind in the Pisa tests that compare achievement worldwide? It’s the fault of schools.

From economic woes to sporting failures, from concerns about mental health and eating habits, to a rise in drug and drink problems, schools are simultaneously seen as the cause of the problem, and the key to the solution. Schools, however, have no chance of rising to the challenge until at least five systemic structural issues have been addressed. 

The first is a growing crisis in teacher recruitment and retention: teachers stay for less and less time in the profession. “Securing and retaining a sufficient supply of suitably qualified teachers” was one of the original three duties of the secretary of state (there are now more than 2,000). Michael Gove abandoned this, believing the market would find a solution. It has: gluts in some areas, acute teacher shortages elsewhere. Without good teachers we are a lost civilisation.

Second, the curriculum is not fit for purpose. That won’t be corrected unless the deficiencies in exams are tackled simultaneously: at present these are unreliable, costly and privately run for profit by three boards. By focusing on the essential skills of numeracy and literacy we neglect others equally vital to our youngsters’ futures – such as high-level IT skills, thinking analytically within disciplines, solving inter-disciplinary problems, working in teams, interacting civilly with individuals from different cultural backgrounds and thinking for themselves while acting for others.

Third, the over-centralised governance and accountability system also needs reform. Ministers exercise too much power and too little judgment. Schools should of course be accountable – but not as academies are to the minister. Those in effect are nationalised “government schools”, a model usually found in totalitarian states.

A combination of exam league tables and high-stakes Ofsted inspections has re-enforced a myopic and narrow interpretation of what education is for. At best it celebrates the winners in a competition focusing on the measurable at the expense of the valuable; at worst it creates a climate of fear, bullying and human failure.

Rab Butler
Rab Butler, who was responsible for the 1944 Education Act. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty

Meanwhile, in every other developed democracy, including other parts of the UK, schools are accountable to a democratically elected local body. That is not true of the 7,000 free schools and academies that are an unholy hybrid of private company and charitable foundation, leading to financial scandals.

To these three structural failings add a fourth: school admissions arrangements based on a false prospectus of parental choice when the reality is that schools choose parents through covert selection, favouring the children of the rich over those from challenging families.

Finally, since 2010 the huge funding deficit between state funded schools and the private independent sector has widened further. Social mobility, a declared aim of both government and opposition, will remain a pipe dream until we tackle the unfair privileges this funding gap symbolises and perpetuates. Equity and equality of opportunity to live a fulfilled life are illusory unless these five issues are resolved.

An education act of 2020 should be passed after a cross-party parliamentary “conference”, jointly chaired by the education spokespeople from the three main parties and modelled on the select committee. Its task should be to take evidence from all interested stakeholders about what our future education service should look like. It would deal with the five systemic issues highlighted here and provide a comprehensive action programme for all educational entitlements, from the earliest years into old age.

It would herald an age of ambition, hope and partnership and a society committed to unlocking the talents not of a few, nor even the many, but of all its citizens.

Tim Brighouse was the schools commissioner for London from 2002-07

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*Fuente: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/03/rab-butler-1944-revolutionise-education-act-tim-brighouse

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