Raising the ‘quality’ bar in education |
The Quality Council of India, in association with the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, has
initiated a project to introduce the quality accreditation standard for quality school
governance in the Kendriya Vidyalayas. Comprehensive technical assistance, including
training, is a key aspect of the programme, reports Nandu Manjeshwar. |
A sk a parent how
they judged a
school to be ideal
for their ward. Is it
merely on a few
academic gladiators that a school
churns out each year, or the sprinkling
of sportspersons, or the
air-conditioned school building,
or on the basis of the foreign
jaunts organised during the annual
vacation? Ask another pertinent
question, and that is about school
governance. It indeed is difficult
to get an objective response. |
 |
(Left-right) Mr Vipin Sahni,
Director, NABET, Mr
Girdhar J Gyani, Secretary
General, QCI, Mr Ranglal
Jamuda, KVS
Commissioner, and Dr U
N Singh, Joint
Commssioner
(Academics), KVS, at the
MoU signing ceremony on
December 17, 2008. |
|
There is, of course, the criterion
of definitive instructions on
curriculum and syllabus for
schools. Wouldn’t it be more
appropriate if holistic education is
enmeshed to achieve better overall
performance? Every school
undoubtedly aspires to produce
good academic results. In this
melee of schools, rivalling one
another in showcasing academic
results alone, we are missing out
on one important facet of their
quality — that is their role in
building overall qualitative
growth of students confident
enough to face the world after
exiting the portals of the school. |
“Other than norms and guidelines
issued by CBSE, there is not
enough on the management aspect
in schools. Each school has its
own version of management and
there is no uniformity. The Standard
for Quality School Governance
issued by Quality Council
of India (QCI) is a step in the right
direction,” opines M M Joshi,
Deputy Commissioner, Kendriya
Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS).
The higher educational institutions
in the country, such as colleges,
technical, architecture and
medical institutions are governed
by commissions/councils, while
school education is yet to achieve
that standard. At the second Quality
Council of India (QCI) National
Quality Conclave in February
2007, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, then
President of India, stressed the
need for development of a standard
for schools to ensure quality
of education across the nation. In
line with his recommendation,
QCI has developed the Accreditation
Standard for Quality School
Governance. This standard provides
a framework for effective
management and delivery of the
holistic education programme
aimed at overall development of
the students.
Quality of education is characterised
by creation of capacity
for life-long learning. There are
three basic elements for quality of
education: Management Quality,
Teacher Quality and Student
Quality. The accreditation standard,
therefore, does not relate
either to the school curriculum or
syllabus. |
 |
— Lord
Meghnad
Desai
Economist and
thinker |
|
|
On the other hand, what the standard for quality school governance aims at is to:
- Provide educational services
that seek to enhance the satisfaction
level of all interested
parties.
-
Provide a basis for assessing,
and where required, rating the
effectiveness of an educational
management system.
- Develop quality consciousness
among interested parties
involved in school activities.
 |
Mr Girdhar J Gyani, Secretary General, QCI and Mr Ranglal
Jamuda IAS, Commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS)
signing the MoU. |
QCI has taken this concept to various parts of country and conducted workshops to explain the same to teachers, principals and the management staff of the schools. The concept is new, and hence there is apprehension. But it is now generally understood and accepted that there is more to school education beyond academic results.
KVS Commissioner Ranglal
Jamuda is of the view that this
intervention to improve quality is
not only good but noble indeed. In
his view, the adoption of a uniform
quality standard across the
country is the need of the hour,
particularly if we believe that the
success of the nation depends on
the education level of its people.
The KVS, under his guidance,
has co-opted QCI in preparing
KV Schools to achieve quality
school governance. A Memorandum
of Understanding was signed
between KVS and QCI on
December 17, 2008, according to
which, QCI shall provide comprehensive
technical assistance,
including training to the schools,
in preparing them for adoption of
the accreditation standard for
quality school governance. |
“As a pilot project, this MoU
is only for two KV Schools, one
being IIT Powai (Mumbai) and
the other, RK Puram Sector 8
(New Delhi). The stakeholders
of both the schools attended the
workshops and are energised to
undertake the tasks at hand vigorously.
With this kind of enthusiasm
shown by them, we intend
to complete the task within the
next academic session,” asserts
M M Joshi.
The objective being clear, the following `subsidiary objectives’ emanate:
- To assess the existing status of
Educational System of the
identified schools.
- To suggest alternatives to
Educational System to meet
the requirements of the QCI
accreditation standard.
- To lay down standard operating
procedures for effective
Educational System.
- To train key personnel in
these processes.
- To review the outcome regularly
and periodically.
- To enable the school to seek
accreditiation from the
National Accreditation Board
for Education and Training
(NABET).
“In the meantime, we have
conducted our own GAP analysis
and, of course, the same analysis
conducted by QCI would be wider
in scope and more comprehensive.
KV Schools have brand
equity and many other schools, I
am aware, follow us. Having said
that, we would like to know; Are
we better than the best in this
field? Independent observers or
assessors, like QCI, have to certify
our status,” says M M Joshi. |
 |
— Mani
Shankar
Aiyar
Union Minister |
|
|
KVS is confident that the
schools selected for the pilot project
would come out with flying
colours. “In the next phase, we
shall take this project to schools in
Begaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad,
Kolkata and Guwahati. In the coming
years, many of our schools
would have received accreditation
standards for quality school governance,”
avers M M Joshi. |
Commissioner Jamuda’s
vision is clear — to set a benchmark
in quality school governance
that others can emulate.
“Manufacturing and services
sectors set benchmarks, and periodically
carry out upward revision,
so why not schools too,”
asks M M Joshi. He adds, “In
fact, we are grateful to QCI, and
particularly to its
Secretary
General Girdhar Gyani, for motivating
us to take up the quality
route to improving school governance.”
“It needs to be mentioned here that Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan is extremely focussed, and more importantly, there is tremendous desire for Quality interventions in schools,” stresses the QCI Secretary General.
The launch of the pilot project is the first step in the journey towards the ultimate goal of coveing all the schools accross the country with the programme. |
|
It’s best to catch them young! |
Hank Cram believes we may have actually got it all backwards, so far as our education
systems go. Time perhaps, then, to re-look the way we address the education needs of
our children. |
The importance of early
age and elementary
education continues
to grow as we
come to understand
more about how the brain develops
and how the mind works. Thanks
to the enormous advances in neurological
sciences, which let us
observe brain functioning, educators
are continuing to learn about
learning. This growing knowledge
base affirms many of our current
practices, refutes others and draws
our attention to new knowledge
that has implications for how we
teach, what we teach and how
schools can best be organised. |
One of the revelations from
neurological science is the importance
of the early years. While we
experience our fastest learning
between birth and five years old
(acquiring our motor development,
basic language skills and early
socialisation skills) what students
learn in the early grades has considerable
influence on their future
emotional well-being and academic
performance. |
Educators in the US have been
fond of saying that ‘elementary
teachers love the children, secondary
teachers love the content and
college professors love themselves.’
This metaphor, characterising
the
 |
Children in elementary schools are
most receptive to learning new skills.
Education KV.qxd 12/26/2008 5:51 PM Page 4 |
pedagogical styles of the
various levels of education, is being
reinforced by what we are learning
about learning.
Elementary teachers, according
to the latest brain research, are
responsible for laying the foundation
that may determine a child’s
emotional maturity and self-discipline,
their habits of mind and
love of learning, and the basic
skills prerequisite for future academic
success. It is an opportune
time, according to brain
researchers, to introduce the foundations
for acquiring a second
language, learning a musical
instrument, mastering math concepts,
and developing emotional
intelligence skills such as impulse
coElementary teachers, according
to the latest brain research, are
responsible for laying the foundation
that may determine a child’s
emotional maturity and self-discipline,
their habits of mind and
love of learning, and the basic
skills prerequisite for future academic
success. It is an opportune
time, according to brain
researchers, to introduce the foundations
for acquiring a second
language, learning a musical
instrument, mastering math concepts,
and developing emotional
intelligence skills such as impulse
control and delayed gratification. |
 |
— Amartya Sen
Nobel Laureate |
|
|
While these skills can be a part
of the educational process at any
level, a child’s brain, we are being
told, is most receptive to the introduction
of these skills during the
early years. Early age and elementary
teachers may be the best
equipped, because of their “love of
children”, to teach many of these
skills, and may have the most conducive
classroom settings in which
to teach them. |
As a former school superintendent,
secondary teacher and college
professor, I have always been in
awe of the magic that pre-K and
elementary teachers practice inmeeting the intense emotional
demands of young learners and
transforming them from unskilled
explorers of their own world to
skilled investigators, still curious
but prepared to make sense of the
real world. Watching a child learn
to read, to write, to calculate and to
think is a marvellous thing to experience,
but being responsible for
making that happen must be enormously
rewarding. |
Perhaps what we are learning
about learning is suggesting that we
have had it backwards. Instead of
venerating the college professors
and university researchers (who
already love themselves), we
should be focussing on the real
educational super stars, those educators
who work with children at
the age that most neuroscientists
would agree is the most important
and formative. |
(Hank Cram Ed.D is President/
Executive Director, Middle States
Association Commission on Secondary
Schools) |
|
sHarnessing young minds |
Research shows how elementary education plays a pivotal
role in shaping a child’s mental and intellectual growth
and development. Jeanne M Gallagher has mapped the
academic growth chart of children, with special focus on
their formative years. |
Elementary education,
generally accepted
as education of
students aged 6-12,
provides the foundation
of learning to read, then
reading to learn. Education before
the age of six is often conceptbased
and concrete, teaching a
child to discriminate among
shapes, colours, sizes, locations,
physical properties, and relationships.
Incorporating this sort of
broad-based information fosters
brain development that creates the
ability to make more nuanced
discriminations, which are at the
heart of formal education.
Formal education is primarily conducted through exposure to spoken and written symbols. At the elementary level, the child begins the pattern of decoding the symbols of language and mathematics Just as he learned to identify the “red things” in the fruit and vegetable aisle of the supermarket at age 3, now he begins to recognise that some symbols have sticks; some have rounded bellies or heads; some are curvy; some are large and some are small. He also begins to match the symbols to sounds and numbers, and eventually, strings of symbols to specific meanings. |
 |
— Azim
Premji
Chairman, Wipro |
|
|
 |
Early years of education develop the foundation on which a child’s
ability is built. |
|
The first few years of elementary education encourage children to gain fluency with this symbolism, to hear it and attach meaning, to recognise it visually and attach meaning, to speak and have certain expectations, and to write it and have certain expectations. The first years of elementary education are the equivalent of the new driver who can steer or make the car move, but cannot yet smoothly do both at once. |
In the later elementary years, with mastery of symbolism in place and with use of that symbolism becoming
 |
Children are introduced to formal education through exposure to symbols. |
an automatic function for the child, the student can move ahead, using that automatic functionality to unlock information about subjects and the wide-ranging world. The child becomes aware of a universe far beyond his immediate ken and is drawn to learn more about it.
Just as early age education sets the foundation of brain development that permits a child to discriminate among experiences in the concrete world, elementary education sets the foundation for recognising and fluently using the formal symbols of language and math. This enables the child to move beyond the need to concretely experience an inaugural event in order for it to move from unknown to known. Instead, he can hear about it, read about it, write about it, talk about it, and in doing so, make it his own. Through the earliest years of education, the child’s ability to build upon that foundation is established. |
(Jeanne M Gallagher is Manager
of Membership Information at
Middle States Commission on
Elementary Schools. Their website
is: http://ces-msa.org) |
|
|
|