CHENNAI: Members of the State Platform for Common School System (SPCSS) and the All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) raised their concerns over the T S R Subramanian Committee’s report for the evolution of the new education policy at a press conference here on Monday.
General secretary of the SPCSS P B Prince Gajendra Babu said that the Ministry of Human Resource Development had not made the report available for scrutiny by academics and the public. “Four of the five members of the committee set up by the HRD, including the chairperson Subramanian, are retired IAS Officers. There is only one academic in the committee,” he said.
“Though block, village, district and State-level discussion is said to have taken place before the committee filed the report, none of the parents or teachers that we had spoken to from different parts of the State was even aware of such a development. Then, who were the participants?” he asked.
Taking exception to certain sections of the report that he claimed to have obtained through private sources, Babu said, “The report is driving us towards a common syllabus by suggesting a common eligibility test after Class 12. This will only discourage students from economically backward families and first-generation students from pursuing higher education,” he said.
The committee also raised concerns about the report’s suggestion that political and other movements on the campus should be restricted, saying that doing so would interfere with the student’s democratic rights.
It also said that the recommendation to give students of classes VI and above alternative opportunities for pursuing vocational training in case of remedial classes failing to improve their performance cannot be an ideal course of action.