Mushrooming of bogus examination boards in the country pose a danger to the Indian education system, said chairman of Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) Dr G Immanuel on his visit to Ahmedabad in Saturday. Dr Immanuel was here to give away Shri Ramanbhai Patel-AMA Shreshtha Shikshal awards to two teachers from the state for excellence in education.
"The biggest challenge is bogus examination boards. Today, there are more than 100 bogus boards with 15 running under the nose of the ministry in Delhi, nearly 40 in Uttar Pradesh and some in Bihar. Officially, we have 33 boards including 29 state boards. The number of approved boards have increased to 62 due to government compulsion, especially with new cities coming in. Those new ones include Urdu, Sanskrit boards," he said.
Further, taking serious note of criminal acts in schools, he cited a recent incident of a student attacking teacher in Ahmedabad. "Recently, in a school in Maninagar, it was reported that a student stabbed the teacher in school. The child was politically connected and had not liked when the teacher asked him to behave well. The next day, he brought a knife to school and stabbed the teacher", he said. Adding, apart from criminal acts, cheating during board exams, educators holding bogus certificates and coaching classes are other challenges that we as a country need to address on priority."
On FRC
When DNA asked his view on the much-debated Fee Regulatory Bill, he said, "We need progressive schools and for that, we need to pay the teachers well. There should be all sorts of schools and parents should be given an option to choose as per their wish and capacity. FRC is just license raj. Like Singapore, Japan and Malaysia, which inspires college students to take up teaching as a career, India needs to build that environment. We have not raised the standards of teaching in our country."
Shreyas school teachers get award
The Ramanbhai Patel-AMA Shreshtha Shikshal Award for 2017 was given to two teachers from the state. Parbati Patel from Shreyas Foundation was awarded for her unique pedagogy of using nature as the classroom. She developed an on-campus bio-gas plant using readily available horse manure from the on-campus horses. She also executed a solar unit to warm swimming pool water during winters.
Mittalkumar Pandya from PMG Thakar Adarsh High school in Kadi was awarded to establish Atal Tinkering lab for experiments, developing robotic systems with students and focussing on science and sports instead of project-driven learning.
