Pitching for quality education, School Education and Literacy Secretary, Anil Swarup, said that the government is mulling plans to hold entrance exams for B.Ed.
“There is no plan to scrap B.Ed. Under consideration is an entrance exam for B.Ed to ensure that only quality students get to these courses.” Anil Swarup said while speaking in education conclave organised by Newsd in collaboration with Global Indian International School, Global Institute of Technology Management and Mother’s Pride.
“To improve the education system in states like Bihar, UP and Jharkhand, we have been focusing on recruiting quality teachers,” he said.
He added that one education policy isn’t for everyone as problems vary from state to state.
“When I went to Kerala, (and) then travelled down to Jharkhand, I realised these areas have absolute different types of interventions. For instance, my true problem is the teacher, who doesn’t go to school.”
Highlighting the initiatives take by the government to digitise education sector, Swarup said, “We have started distributing GPS-enabled tablets in Chhattisgarh on experimental basis to ensure the attendance of teachers. Apart from this, tablets can be used for other purposes like delivering fun videos to teach children.”
“My job is to make things happen on the ground, what is the use of a good policy debated and kept somewhere.” he added. He said that the first thing to evolve education is to get the child to school, then serving the product in a manner that the children accept it.
“It is on my list to visit J&K and see how we can enhance education system at school level there,” Swarup said when asked if the education system has been affected due to protests in the states.
Atul Temurnikar, chairman and co-founder, Global Schools Foundation said, “As I belong to tech background, the first thing I understand (is) that you need to make the teacher productive, and you need to make sure students learn faster. Therefore, we started digitising the schools. Our first briefing to our members was to ensure there was no paper flow in office, we made it paperless.”
Speaking about her experience with technology, Prince Public School principal, Lakshmi Venkatesh said, “We have two branches (and) one is completely digitized and it’s doing well,” she said. “Digitisation makes class very interesting but the touch of teachers are necessary.”
Ashok Mehta, head of government policy, Educomp said that if technology is used appropriately it brings remarkable change. “Now technology revolutions are happening everywhere,” he said.
The discussion was moderated by Shutapa Paul, group editor, Newsd. Sarthak Jain, director, Newsd said, it was an insightful discussion and delivered the vote of thanks.
