CHENNAI: The Education Promotion Society for India (EPSI), a not for profit autonomous society, provided a platform for members and education providers from the southern region to discuss reforms in the regulatory system in higher education and school education, here recently.
Representatives of educational institutions and universities participating in the interaction conducted by EPSI— an association of private educational institutions — exhorted the Central Board of Secondary Education to allow schools to adopt its syllabus without a no-objection certificate from the State government. The Samacheer Kalvi syllabus brought down the quality of education in Tamil Nadu, they said. And in the absence of a matriculation syllabus, many schools were considering switching over to the CBSE syllabus. However, the procedure was not easy.
G Viswanathan, chancellor of VIT University and president of EPSI, urged the Tamil Nadu government to allow schools and parents to take a call on which board and language they should offer their students. When students were promoted without the requisite attendance from Std I to VIII under the Right to Education Act, it became difficult for them to pass Class 10, he said.
Describing the higher education scenario as no better, he pointed out that almost all colleges were affiliated to a university, functioning more or less like examination centres for the university. The Central government had announced that 3,500 colleges would be made autonomous, but only 400 have received autonomy until now. “EPSI is asking that all colleges that have been functioning for over 10 years be declared autonomous,” he said.
The interactive session saw the members discussing problems faced by private schools, colleges and medical colleges. The speakers said industry bodies must provide accreditation to colleges and universities to make the process quicker. Similar one-day sessions will be conducted in Kolkata, Chandigarh, Delhi and Mumbai and a memorandum would be compiled for submission to the HRD Ministry, said H Chaturvedi, alternate president of EPSI.