1. Issue raised by Eklavya:. It is not valid to assess the impact of HSTP by analyzing the results of the Tenth Board Exam. Eklavya’s studies show that HSTP children do as well as non-HSTP children in the tenth Board. Achievement levels should have been compared at the Eighth level.

Comment: In the joint meeting with the department and representatives of Eklavya on 01.04.2002 it was mutually agreed upon that Eklavya would submit a comparison of achievement levels at the Tenth Board Exam of the children who had passed the elementary stage with their HSTP curriculum with those children who had had done so with the state curriculum. It may be pointed out that it was not possible for a comparative evaluation of HSTP children with the non HSTP children at the 8th standard level because the textbooks and evaluation system at the 8th level for the HSTP and the other children are different. Both share a common stream only at the public examination of 10th Board and so a comparative evaluation is possible at the 10th level. Eklavya accepted this common reference norm and had no objection even when the minutes of the meeting were circulated. So Eklavya’s protest against the comparison of children at the Tenth Board level does not hold in view of their acceptance of this comparative framework.

Eklavya had also submitted such a comparison in its own review. Unfortunately its own information was very limited and vague and dated as far back as 1985. It did not compare performance between HSTP and non HSTP children on adequate scale. It was necessary to access information from the Madhyamik Shiksha Mandal to place the performance of the children with HSTP curriculum at the elementary stage in the context of the result for the entire State. The critical issue is that this was done for the subject of science particularly. This should really have given an opportunity to highlight Eklavya’s contribution to the children’s understanding of Science.

2. Issue raised by Eklavya: The present examinations at Class X level are largely confined to information recall testing with little or no emphasis on testing a student for problem solving, experimental or analytical skills or conceptual understanding. Eklavya discourages rote learning and so Tenth Board tests do not offer a fair comparison.

Comment: Standard tests such as the CBSE or the State Board evaluate standard aptitudes. These are the minimum a child is expected to pass with satisfactory levels by publicly expected standards. It is only reasonable to expect that children with better quality inputs and more evolved conceptual analysis perform better in the examinations than those who have simply memorized without much understanding. It is assumed that a person with a deeper conceptual base and understanding retain concepts and information related to them with greater facility than one who has no such understanding and has depended on blind memory recall. A child with just rote learning may be deficient in analytical skills, but a child with sound basic concepts, will have a stronger foundation and should be able to build on it with greater advantage.

It is to be noted that Eklavya claims curricular commonality at the elementary level with the state curriculum, claiming in fact additional inputs and better design of books and pedagogy. That being the case, HSTP children should be ahead of the non HSTP children and this should have been reflected in a common exam.

3 Issue: Eklavya claims that their studies prove HSTP children do as well other students, if not better.

Comment: This should also have been indicated in an objective test like the Tenth Board not just internal studies of Eklavya.

4 Issue: Eklavya states that their inter district ranking reflects that they are at the average level of high school efficiency

Comment: The Tenth Board result shows that atleast 26 non HSTP districts children do better than the HSTP children of Hoshangabad.

Comment: This is a serious concern. All those who intervene in a schooling system have to think about the evaluation systems that are prevalent and which will ultimately certify the childen’s learning level in a way that will influence the children’s future options in higher education. After all school certification examinations are conducted either by central or by the state government. Children have to take these examinations. The government has a responsibility for the children studying in its own schools. HSTP schools were not exempted from this requirement. Therefore, Eklavya should in fact have looked at the performance of their children at a higher level to introduce at the elementary level necessary inputs to enable an increasingly better performance at the higher level. This would have been expected of them as part of their own professed aim at mainstreaming innovation.

Was Eklavya in the past 30 years of it’s work never concerned about how its children fared in the important higher level public exams? Some-how this kind of self-confessed lack of attempt to look at the learning continuum of the child, specially at the decisive levels of schooling, appears unfair to the child.

6 Issue: Have children from Hoshangabad done outstanding well in PET/PPT/PMT examinations? Eklavya feels that posing and examining such a question in flawed fundamentally.

Comment: It is surprising that Eklavya finds this question fundamentally flawed because this was an issue that was raised by Eklavya on its own without any prompting by the government. In the meeting with the HCM on 03.03.2002 one of the representatives of Eklvya suggested that the children from Hoshangabad had done well in PET/PMT exams. This was not an issue which was flagged in the joint meeting on 01.04.2002 of the government and Eklavya, and Eklavya on its own submitted this information in its report. However, the data that Eklavya had given (without being solicited by the government) itself shows that the HSTP district does not necessarily fare better than a non HSTP district which has similar literacy rates.