CHENNAI: The panel constituted to draft the State Education Policy has proposed several reforms to enhance early childhood care, streamline preschool education, restrict funding to private schools under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, and banning or regulating of private coaching centres — all with the aim to prevent commercialisation of education. The panel, headed by retired Madras High Court judge D Murugesan, submitted its report to Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday.
The panel recommended against enrolling children in private schools under 25% RTE quota and reducing funds provided for this to private schools to a bare minimum. The government should consider providing financial aid under RTE Act only to unaided non-minority private schools in remote areas like hills where there are no government primary schools, the committee said.
The panel has recommended that education should be in Tamil medium from primary to university levels. A dedicated research wing on teaching and learning Tamil should also be set up, the report said.
In line with the state’s focus on social justice, the committee recommended that a curriculum that “enables a socio-cultural, economic, ecological and technological transformation, deeply rooted in considerations of social equity and justice” be evolved. It stressed that the curriculum should engage “with structures of inequality in society, and work towards equality. For the social goal of annihilation of caste, it is imperative that curriculum addresses the evil in our society.”
The report has asked the government to create a directorate to oversee early childhood care and development for children from ages 0-5.
End commercialisation, ban education advertisement: Panel
Anganwadi centres for children aged 0-3 should be renamed ‘Mother-Child Care Centres’ and workers in it should be called ‘Mother-Child Care Takers’. Pre-primary schools should be ‘Child Development Centres’ (CDCs) with mentors called ‘Child Developers’.
CDCs should focus on activities like drawing, play and children who complete three years by July 31 should be enrolled in them. The government should open CDCs wherever government private schools are located and regulations should be brought for those run by private management. The focus needs to be primarily on ‘Spoken Tamil’ in addition to ‘Spoken English’ here.
Taking a stand against coaching centres, the panel has said the government should strongly consider banning all coaching centres being run parallel with schools/colleges by individuals/corporate companies in the state through physical and virtual modes including private tuition centres. The state should consider banning all forms of formal education-related advertisements through media as it amounts to commercialisation.
Regulatory body for deemed univs
The SEP is against any form of entrance test for admissions to higher education courses, and wants board exam marks to be the basis for enrolment into such courses. It also wants a regulatory body for ‘deemed to be universities’
