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10. Revamping school inspection: The system of school inspection needs to be revamped and
revitalised, with a greater role for local stake holders and greater transparency in the system. The
solution does not lie in simply expanding the system - rather, we need to develop systems to
ensure meaningful monitoring, including provision of greater facilities to school inspectors, a
separation of inspection of qualitative and administrative aspects, transparency in the criteria of
inspection, and greater involvement of local stakeholders.
11. Teachers and teacher training: Teachers are the single most important element of the
school system, and the country is already facing a severe shortage of qualified and motivated
school teachers at different levels. It is urgent to restore the dignity of school teaching as a
profession and provide more incentives for qualified and committed teachers. Non-teaching
official duties such as electoral activities should not be allowed to interfere with the teaching
process. Forums that allow and encourage teachers to exchange ideas, information and
experiences, including a web-based portal, should be developed.
At the same time, there should be transparent systems for ensuring accountability of school
teachers. As far as possible, teachers should be recruited to particular schools.
The training of teachers is a major area of concern at present, since both pre-service and inservice
training of school teachers is extremely inadequate and also poorly managed in most
states. Pre-service training needs to be improved and differently regulated in both public and
private institutions, while systems for in-service training require expansion and major reform that
allows for greater flexibility.
12. Reforms in the curriculum and examination system: Curriculum reform remains a
critically important issue in almost all schools. School education must be made more relevant to
the lives of children. There is need to move away from rote-learning to understanding concepts,
developing good comprehension and communication skills and learning how to access
knowledge independently. This also requires substantial changes in the examination system,
especially at Board level but also earlier.
13. Use of Information and Communication Technology: Wherever feasible, ICT
should be made more accessible to teachers, students and administration for learning,
training, research, administration, management, monitoring, etc. This requires the
provision of more facilities such as computers as well as connectivity and broadband
facilities. Computer-aided learning also requires training of teachers and other staff in
order to make the best use of the technology.
14. English language teaching: Proficiency in English is widely perceived as an important
avenue for employment and upward mobility, which also greatly facilitates the pursuit of higher
education. The incorporation of English into the curriculum through the teaching of English as a
language in Class I and teaching of one other subject in English medium in later classes requires
making pedagogical changes to contextualise language learning, increasing the availability of
English language teachers and providing more bilingual and supplementary teaching materials.
At the same time, mutlilinguality must be promoted and language issues must be explicitly taken
on board in designing school curricula and methods of pedagogy.
15. Interventions to ensure access of educationally deprived categories:
Special interventions
are necessary to ensure greater access to education of educationally deprived categories, and
some proposals for this are developed in more detail in the accompanying Note. Obviously,
specific measures are required to ensure greater enrolment and retention of girl students.
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