While addressing the National Conference on School Education 2016, organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Dr Kailash Satyarthi,Nobel Peace Laureate & Founder, Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, mentioned that “it is our collective responsibility to ensure that every child gets access to quality education, as this would yield moral as well as economic dividends”. Referring to his experience on dealing with child abuse and trafficking, Dr Satyarthi insisted that children should be made aware of their rights which lays emphasis on aspects likeequality, protection, prevention of sexual abuse, etc. In his opinion, education should not merely be considered as a philanthropic activity, but as an empowering human right, which is not only a fundamental right, but also a law. Going forward, we need to strengthen public education system, encourage PPPs, and devise our education policy in sync with the global developments.
Dr Subhash C Khuntia, Secretary, Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, while delivering the keynote address, emphasized upon the aspect of building a sound education system with the involvement of private sector. Purpose of education is to make a student resilient towards taking challenges of the real world, and help develop multi-dimensional personality thereby making him/her evolve as a good citizen. Some of the measures for enhancing quality in education includes granting flexibility to states, accountability to teachers, blended learning approaches and adoption of computer aided learning. Stressing upon the aspect of fostering partnership between industry and the government, Dr Khuntia said that the CII should take a lead initiative in areas such as twinning of schools for idea exchange, teachers training, deployment of human resources for improving outcomes of schools, etc.
On this occasion, they released the CII-KPMG report on Right to Education (RTE),and also launched ‘Building Partnerships Initiative in School Education’
Earlier, setting the context of the conference, Mr Harpal Singh, Chairman, CII National Committee on School Education and Chairman & Mentor, Fortis Healthcare (India) Ltd, said that the CII-KPMG report on Right to Education (RTE) Act has been very well received by all the stakeholders including the Indian government. Mr Singh mentioned that with 3.9% of India’s GDP being spent on education, we need to ensure that it enhances the learning outcomes are improved significantly. In his opinion, with the content growing at an enormous pace, it is crucial that the learnability rate also improves in order to equip students deal with the volatility of changing content. Besides, as a step towards upscaling the level of outcomes, he suggested that schools should be allowed to function independently focusing upon the broad principles of agility, flexibility, and diversity. Prime areas of concern which require urgent attention are quality aspect and drop out rates.