Action Points

• Encourage the setting up of Play Schools and Kindergarten schools even as ‘Free’ schools, to teach creativity with unstructured play and to instill the attitude to persist till the task is done.
• Encourage multi linguistic skills as play. Multi linguistic ability enhances cognitive abilities. Reserving days for one language for work and play will help. Say, English on Mondays, Hindustani on Tuesday, Mother tongue or local language on Wednesday, Sanskrit on Thursday and so on. Having thus learnt to speak grammatically and idiomatically, reading and writing can easily follow. (See – “ Languages – Make us Strangers in our Own Country!”).
• Encourage children right from Kindergarten classes to share and care and be mindful of others and of the dignity of labour that teaches them to work themselves, to keep their classes and toilets and play areas neat and clean(as Japanees children are made to do).
• Universalize the mid – day meals scheme, whether hot or pre – packaged, to encourage better attendance and to ensure adequate and essential nutrition to the children. Provide regular medical check-ups as necessary.
• Universalize the School voucher system to ensure that the students have a choice of Government or even amongst the Private schools. Force all schools to compete for students. Government schools can also, be set up as public private partnerships. The infrastructure and operating expenditures of Government aided schools should be decided upon and overseen by the local authorities / leaders / parents as stakeholders, hence, ensuring that the cost of admission can be as determined by them.
• Encourage early recognition of aptitude and talent and suitably reward them with awards and recognition perhaps through inter school competitions at local, regional and national levels.
• Remove restrictions on the starting of Schools. The more the number of schools, the greater the choice and hence, more competition for the students, leading to improved standards. The local authorities/leaders/parents can ensure standards are maintained.
• Recruit better teachers. Just paying them more is not the answer, as it is they are well paid by the local standards. Test and rate teachers and incentivize them with appropriate recognition, suitable awards and merit pay not only on their capabilities but also, on the performance of their students in standardized test parameters. Ensure they attend skill up-gradation training and are tested thereon regularly. In view of the many incidents of teacher’s resorting to extraordinarily severe corporeal punishments to children, bordering on torture, it may be advisable to a appoint teachers only after appropriate psychological profiling.
• In the Government schools, involve local leaders and the local administration and parent bodies in the rating of teachers and schools and even in the appointment of the Teachers and the Principals and in the approval process for spending the budget. Ensure Government schools are as good or better than private schools.
• Encourage ‘on-line’ teaching methods to improve the teaching and mentoring in all schools. Thus has been noted to bring about greater improvement in rural/poorer areas. Smaller size and even multi-age classes, in which those who can mentor/teach others do and where the child can re-test him/herself in a particular subject till successful, all help.
• Setup bodies consisting of non – academicians, such as employers, employees with relevant skills and experience, and Industry and Trade bodies, to list out the proper skills required for the VII^th / X^th / XII^th or college passed. Then demand of the academicians to draw up the syllabus to allow the students to attain to the desired skill set. Emphasize understanding of fundamentals and of innovation and practical skills.
• Ensure that appropriate student loans and scholarships are easily available, from Pre-School levels onwards and at concessional rates, with easy and flexible repayment options, for vocational training and also, for higher studies.
• Ensure all necessary support (subsidy, vouchers, scholarships) are easily available right from school level, thus allowing higher education to be purely merit based. Children do not have a vote, while 18 year olds do, and politicians have a vision only upto the next election. Hence, the present bias towards declaring quotas for Colleges while neglecting Schools, and therefore the importance of Parents being involved in the functioning of Schools.

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