Anamika Srivastava, Assistant Director, Centre for Social and Education Policy, Jindal Global Law School talks about taking a systematic look at not detaining kids in school and why the parameters have to be relooked at immediately
After the Delhi government’s move to introduce the bill to scrap the ‘no detention’ clause (chapter IV, section 16) of the Right to Education (RTE) Act (2009) in November, 2015, it is now, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India which is rethinking the clause. This was made evident in the draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 which has suggested a review of the no detention policy (NDP). Although the NDP will be retained upto class V but it is the upper primary students who will no longer be covered by the policy.
It is argued that the NDP has seriously affected the academic performance of the students by making the teaching and learning processes inconsequential and has adversely affected the quality of school education.
The NDP clause, one of the most progressive clauses of the RTE Act (2009) was introduced along with the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation System (CCE) which ushered in radical examination reforms in the school system. The aim was to facilitate holistic development of children by ensuring that their progress in a given subject is periodically monitored.
The major setback to these reforms has come in terms of poor ground level implementation of these policies. While in spirit, both the NDP and the CCE are based on a broader meaning of education, the inability of these policies to assess the prevailing social practices in the school system, calls for a review of these polices.
While it is often argued that with the introduction of the NDP and the CCE, students have become carefree and non-serious about the teaching and learning processes, we argue that it is the misinterpretation of the NDP and the CCE as ‘automatic promotion’ and ‘casual assessment’ policies, respectively that has resulted in the failure of these policies.
There is a need for a radical change in the attitude of stakeholders towards the concept of ‘no detention’. It should not be equated with ‘automatic promotion’. Repeating the grade has been argued to be one of the biggest factors leading to drop-outs.
While it could be argued that six years is not an adequate period to gauge the effectiveness of a policy, it is also important to recognize that the NDP in its current state of implementation is creating a learning vacuum at the most fundamental level of education.