Annexure- II Note on the issues raised by Eklavya on HSTP in it’s letter dated July 8th, 2002.

Eklavya in its letter dated July 8, 2002 has raised some issues regarding the government decision to close HSTP. Regrettably several point made by Eklavya are in fact a deviation of their position from their earlier stand during their discussion with the government and so it is necessary to clarify the actual position.

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.

5 Issue: Eklavya asserts HSTP has made no attempt to address issues concerning high school teaching, it would not be judicious to derive conclusions on performance of HSTP.

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.

Your letter appears to do a volte face over Eklavya's own agreed upon criteria for review.

 

7 Further, in your letter you have argued that HSTP had two main strengths:

    1. The strength of its text books are that experts from Delhi University and TIFR came down to Hoshangabad to develop materials with the teacher:

Comment

The relevant issue here is not the books developed, but the process of developing them on a participatory basis with teachers. This process of material development, if it is Eklavya’s strength, should be incorporated in mainstream teacher training, and this is precisely why Eklavya was offered the opportunity of collaborating with the government on teacher training. Eklavya’s brushing aside of this offer as of ‘not much consequence’ suggests Eklavya is not interested in the dissemination of the expertise claimed in the process of text book development. This is regrettable and defeats the state’s concern for mainstreaming the perceived strengths of an innovation.

    1. The second strength is seen by Eklavya to have been the partnership between the state and a voluntary organization.

Comment

In this case the mistake is in limiting the understanding of the state to a Centrally located authority and not recognizing it’s deepening democratic character that is emerging. The government decision recognizes this decentralized space for partnership in allowing Eklavya to run its text books as supplementary materials in schools that opt for them, an offer to which Eklavya has shown no response.

  1. Finally if an agency claims that it offers an alternative educational package that creates learning processes and outcomes evaluated by alternative methods then these should be made clearly and openly known to the public, stating it's learning objectives and the way they have to be measured, what the system will try to achieve and what it does not aim at achieving. The principles it works with should be manifest to public so that the public can choose its system of education. Therefore, democratic institutions have the right to question, accept or reject an educational package. The logical corollary for an agency that takes on the task of creating an alternative system is to demonstrate its efficacy in the open space of the community, by itself, through its own system, without necessarily resting on a fiat issued from above to validate its claim. Eklavya has the freedom to negotiate its educational vision and premises directly with the community. If it's system establishes its relevance, it will generate its own demand. This is the organic nexus that will give strength and meaning to the system that wants to question given frameworks and innovate. The partnership model between an NGO and the state government has to acknowledge the growing space of democratic decentralization. If the earlier understanding of the state meant a centrally located authority and partnership with government schools was mandated through it, then when the management of schools is decentralized to the district, the NGO has to negotiate its partnership at that level. This is not a breach of the earlier partnership. It is a repositioning of the partnership in a deeper democratic context.