10 November 2009

Education reforms – accountibility key missing link IES09

In continuation of my last post on educational reforms – there is a clear need for introducing accountability into the primary and even secondary education in the public sector. The sad truth of our governmental educational system (in primary and secondary) public schools is that teachers don’t attend school, out of the few who attend occasionally, few really teach. Unless, the accountability of teachers is fixed by a) attendance records being made public b) a fair part of the salary being conditional upon performance improvements – there is little hope for reforming the lower public educational system.

The interesting success story of parts of India where citizens have sought attendance records of public teachers and the dramatic impact of such right to information applications on the attendance of such schools is an indicator to this key problem in the existing system. Another indicator of the impact of accountability of public sector education is the ‘Kendriya Vidyalaya’ institutions – which are run extremely well because children of civil servants and important people attend these schools – putting the pressure of accountability by the bureaucrats on improving their performance constantly.

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