Away from the public eye, teachers from across Goa are these days huddled over reams of paper, correcting SSC exam papers in various taluka centres and elsewhere. Little thought is paid to our educators, some of whom do a praiseworthy job in inspiring the next generation and helping qualities and talent to surface in them.
The pain and stress that goes into this work is best exemplified by the pittance that exam correctors get paid for each answer-paper they correct. Or in the deductions from their fees if they don’t meet the target set for them.
Today’s school-teachers are better paid than their counterparts of the past; but the cost of living has gone up too. More importantly, the question to be asked is whether our teachers have the opportunity to be creative throughout their careers. It seems more of them simply get caught in the boredom and routine so that their job ceases to hold out challenges to them after a few years in it.
Needless to say, students should be at the very centre of the educational system. After all, it is built for them; though from the way things are run it might sometimes seem that they are only incidental to the whole affair.
Keeping the SSC examination process in mind, it is increasingly clear that Goa’s main school examination board needs to do a lot to keep up with the times. Our educational system is turning inflexible, or has long been thus. It needs to be updated to the changing times. A growing number of better schools in Goa are shifting to the ICSE exam pattern, and there must be some reason why the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education is being preferred here.
The ICSE exam for Class 10 is conducted by the private, non-government board of school education, the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations. An exam in general education, it runs along the recommendations of the New Education Policy 1986, through the English medium. Candidates appearing have to study seven subjects, with one to three papers in each subject.
As far as Goa goes, the subjects offered are quite inflexible. Former chief minister Manohar Parrikar probably had a point when he attempted to introduce a less-complicated Mathematics paper. Obviously, all students don’t need to study the complex form of Maths currently offered, and could carry on well in life without it.
Students appearing for their SSC exams could well do with a wider choice of optional subjects. They don’t need to believe they are a “failure” in life, simply because they have a dislike for one or two subjects.
The exam administration itself could well do with more transparency. It is essential that paper-setters for the exams should not be selected from only a handful of schools, or else students of these institutions would have an unfair advantage.
Every year, the SSC Board seems intent on pushing up the pass percentage. But does this mean Goa is being better educated? Or that our young students are turning brighter? Instead, it could only imply that our educational system is being geared more to keep teachers in jobs, rather than meet the need of students.
So many years back, there was talk about promoting vocational education in Goa. Politicians like the late Erasmo Sequeira and others worked on plans linked to this goal. But how far this has been implemented successfully is a big question.
In our fast-changing times, it would make a lot of sense if less emphasis was given to cramming education into the minds of our young ones, and instead they were taught how to grapple with large amounts of information now easily available at the click of a mouse. Or how global information could be deployed to solve local problems.
Keeping in mind the interests of those who correct their papers, a lot could be done to reduce the monotony of the paper-correction process. For a State which boasts of its Cyberage and so much spent on promoting computerisation, some low-cost software-based solution could also help make paper correction a less laborious task.
