CHENNAI: The State government seems to be at loggerheads with the Centre on another educational policy close on the heels of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) controversy.
According to senior officials in the school education department, the State is expected to maintain status quo on implementation of no-detention policy till Class VIII, against the Union education ministry’s announcement on Thursday that the policy would be scrapped from the academic year 2018-19.
No-detention policy, a key component of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, was introduced with the intention of ensuring that every child aged between 6 and 14 received elementary education. However, many concerns were raised that promoting students automatically to higher classes till Class VIII has had a deteriorating impact on their performance.
The issue was first taken up for discussion in August 2015 during the Central Advisory Board for Education (CABE) meeting in which education ministers from 19 States, excluding Tamil Nadu, participated. Though it was unanimously decided in the meet to revoke the said policy, the Centre gave an assurance that states will decide if they wanted to continue with the policy or not. However, in April 2017, RTE (Amendment) Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha proposing to scrap the policy.
Days after the Centre set up a nine-member panel headed by former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan to prepare the final draft of the new National Policy on Education, the Union minister for state for human resources development Mahendra Nath Pandey on Thursday said that the proposal will come into effect from academic year 2018-19.
Tamil Nadu is one of the two states that have been opposing this move since 2015. “Status quo will continue and regarding other things, we will consult all our stakeholders to get their views,” school education secretary T Udhayachandran told Express.
Telangana too had objected. Highly placed sources in the Union education ministry said that three other states, including Kerala, have raised their voice against the Centre’s proposal.
“Annual examinations will be conducted for students for classes V and VIII in March and those who fail to clear them might be given another opportunity in June,” the source said adding the discretion to hold these annual examinations and to conduct remedial classes for the students will rest with the states.
Another senior official from the State school education department said the proposal to scrap the policy was made without understanding the essence of RTE Act.
“Learning should be a natural process. Fear of failing would never motivate students to learn and there was no study to establish that students performed better while repeating a course,” the official added, requesting anonymity.
Experts fear that this might increase the dropout rate as failed students might feel uncomfortable with their younger classmates. On the other hand, private schools in Tamil Nadu point to government surveys stating that reading skills of nearly half the elementary students was ‘poor’, to justify their opposition towards continuation of no-detention policy.