Chennai: Opposition for revoking no detention policy in Tamil Nadu is gathering steam as senior educationists and private school managements disapproved of the move to conduct public exams for classes 5 and 8, calling it "retrograde" step.
A day after Deccan Chronicle's report that Tamil Nadu government is preparing to conduct public exams for classes 5 and 8 from this academic year, educationists, private schools termed it "regressive step".
Though school education minister K.A. Sengottaiyan says that the Tamil Nadu cabinet is yet to approve the change in no detention policy, the school education department is preparing for conducting public exams for these two classes.
Besides instructing the district officials to identify exam centres, it also ordered the directorate of government examinations to prepare the question papers for classes 5 and 8.
"The move is most retrograde, obscurantist and anti-poor, anti-education move. One can't think of a more destructive measure than this one. It's a complete farce to say that this would improve the quality of education," says V.Vasanthidevi, former Vice-Chancellor, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli.
She said it is meant to completely exclude a very large section of children from the benefits of education.
"This will make the benefits of education available only to the topmost section and push out all the others at different levels and so that they will become part of the cheap labour force for the corporate sector," she noted.
Further educationists claimed that children from only the poorest background and from tribal and Dalit communities will be branded as unfit.
They said the girl children in each one of the above section will be pushed out of the schools.
"There is no study to show a child who is detained in any class improves and picks up wherever he or she was lagging behind. It's absolutely wrong. On the other hand, most of the children who are detained they will be pushed out of the schooling system for many reasons," Vasanthidevi said adding the child marriages would resurface again."Wanting every child to reach a certain level of competency is acceptable. But that cannot be done through filtering examination. It should be done by giving each child individual attention," the former VC said. Educationists said they would seek appointment with the school education minister and chief minister to urge them to continue with no detention policy. Senior educationist S.S. Rajagopalan said that annual exams will create fear among the children."Many children are late bloomers and they would shine after primary education. It is not proper to brand them as failures when they don't even understand the meaning of failure. It is nothing but violence against children and denying their right to live," he said.
He further said that exams are not important. But learning achievement is more important. P.B. Prince Gajendrababu, general secretary, State Platform for Common School System, has sent a representation to school education minister K.A. Sengottaiyan demanding him to not to tamper with the no- detention policy.
In his representation, he also said that failing the young children in class 5 and 8 is tantamount to violence against them.
"When we are not able to ensure teachers in every class in primary schools, it is unfair to blame the children for the poor learning outcomes. The present move will pull Tamil Nadu backwards," he said. Private schools are also strongly opposing the proposed move to conduct public exams for classes 5 and 8. In a representation to the school education secretary, D.C. Elangovan, secretary, Federation of Associations of Private Schools in Tamil Nadu said, "State board students have to clear five board exams before passing plus-2. It would affect the students psychologically and make the parents opt for other boards like CBSE and ICSE." "By conducting exams to these classes, our educational system is not going to be standardized or upgraded in any way. It would be an unnecessary taxing factor for students," he pointed out.
