8 states to review no-detention policy in schools

Unwilling to take any hasty decision on demands for scrapping no-detention policy in schools, the HRD ministry has constituted another committee of the state education ministers to examine the issue and make recommendations.

The committee, headed by Rajasthan Education Minister Basudev Devnani, will also examine the efficacy and relevance of the continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) system being implementation in the schools, and suggest changes, if any required.

The eight-member committee, which includes education ministers of Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand as its members, has been asked to submit its report by the first week of January, 2016.

Except Karnataka, all the state governments want scrapping of the no-detention policy on the ground that the system of giving automatic promotion to children from Class I to Class VIII under Right to Education Act was contributing to a sharp decline in the quality of the students being produced at the elementary level.

At the recent meeting of the central advisory board of education in August, all the state education ministers rose from their seat and demanded that government must do away with the no-detention policy, saying children were no longer serious about their studies as they do not have fear being failed in the class.