Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, who holds the Education portfolio, has admitted that the quality of education has been affected since the introduction of the no-fail policy till class VIII. There are many, especially teachers, who will agree with this. The number of students held back in class IX is an indication of the failure of the policy, they say. The chief minister also said that he will write to the Union Human Resources Development ministry requesting a review of the Right To Education Act, especially the no-detention section, in view of the ‘falling education standard’ in the State. The view of the government, that is endorsed by parents and students, was that the earlier examination model be reintroduced.
In effect what this signifies is that the policy that was meant to bolster the education standards in Goa has actually worked towards lowering the standard of school education. Is that the fault of the policy, or is it that its implementation and working needs to be restructured? No-detention is an accepted education system successfully employed in many countries, so can it be that its failure in Goa is perhaps due to the manner in which it has been implemented? Rather than writing to the centre to review the policy, the State should have initiated a process to determine why the no-fail policy has failed to provide the desired results and then, based on the findings, implement the necessary changes to make it a success.
Looking back, the no-fail policy was started by taking the wrong step. One of the main reasons for its failure is that the no-fail policy was started in the academic year 2011-12, but the circular for this was issued during the annual summer vacation after the results for the academic year 2010-11 had been declared and even those who had been detained were suddenly promoted to the next class, without being prepared for the demands of the syllabus of the new higher class. It was here that the policy first failed as it gave students the wrong idea that they could get promoted to the next class even if they failed.
The no-fail policy was never meant to be automatic promotion to the next class, though students understood, and still understand, this to mean so. It is not just students who are misinformed on this but the politicians too. It has been reported that during a recent meeting held in New Delhi on the new national education policy, education ministers from various States argued that automatic promotion had led to a situation where there’s a sharp decline in academics.
This basic flaw in the understanding of the policy has to be changed. Students have to be tested for their knowledge of a subject to ensure that they have attained the minimum levels of learning that are required to reach the next higher class, but this testing has to be done without the pressure of an exam. Those who have not attained that minimum understanding have to be given remedial classes by the teachers until they attain that minimum level of learning. Apparently that is not happening in our schools and children are being promoted to the next class even if they have not understood the concepts of their current class. That is not a failure of the policy but that of the teaching system in the State.
As already pointed out, the ground had not been prepared for the policy before its implementation and the entire school system was taken by surprise when the circular instructing schools on starting the no-fail policy was sent out. The no-fail policy has to be combined with the Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) system that was never properly framed nor were teachers trained for it. The concept of CCE should have been first introduced in schools and teachers given time to understand and work with it before the no-detention policy was implemented. Teachers were still following the old system of teaching which relied on examinations to determine whether children had grasped the subject matter, instead of the new method of teaching under the CCE system.
Before taking a hasty decision to replace the no-detention policy, there must be an assessment of why the policy failed and whether it can be turned into a success. Surely the policy is not so full of flaws that there is no other option but to revert to the earlier system. If it’s the implementation that is the cause of the policy’s failure, then there is scope for training teachers to meet the CCE method and retaining the no-fail policy.
