Tharoor lays stress on education reforms

 India’s education system needs to move its focus from examinations to children’s self-enhancement as learning suffers due to more emphasis laid on achievement, said Shashi Tharoor, Union minister of state for human resource development at a national conference for school principals on Thursday.

“We need children with well informed minds rather than ones with well filled minds. Of all those who sit for various examinations, only 0.01 per cent gets selected for Indian Institutes of Technology and nearly 10 per cent gets selected for Harvard. The competition in our society is more aggressive,” said Tharoor.

“Recently introduced school reforms such as school-based assessments enables creative self-expression which is essential.” He added that concerns regarding quality teachers in our schools remain. “In this information era, it is important for teachers to take advantage of what is offered. We need principals, schools and government to address issues on the same platform,” said Tharoor.

Organised by TeacherSity in collaboration with Educomp Foundation, the two-day conference is India’s first symposium for school principals at national level which aims at exploring critical education issues at the policy level.

India’s first MBA programme for school principals was also launched at the conference. Uttarakhand Technical University in collaboration with Selaqui Institute of Management will offer this two-year course.

“Challenges of a classroom teacher is different from a school leader. Since principals are learning on the job, they tend to make more mistakes,” said TeacherSity chairman  Om Pathak. “India does not have a single training programme on education management when other countries do have such initiatives,” said Pathak.