The year 2011 has been a tough year for the education sector as the sector was trapped in the transformation of old policies which ranges from language of instruction to curriculum and the evaluation system.

2012 to be a challenging year

2012 will yet be another challenging year for the education sector as the leaving year has only just made the ground for battle with lot of issues to be solved. Language is often directly connected to the identity of the people. So as a natural consequence, when the Goa government decided to change its policy on Medium of Instruction in primary education, the issue was taken up for large scale discussions and debate.

The MoI is a serious issue

Almost everyone opposed the move; even though they were not directly affected by the decision of the government. The issued started with provisions of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, introduced by the government of India and ended up in the High Court of Bombay at Goa. Before the issue was taken up to the court there were several public meetings conducted by various organizations and political parties, allegations and counter allegations etc.

About 90 per cent of the schools in Goa are either run by the state government or privately managed schools funded by the government. Till the fourth grade, the state government provides aid to schools that provide education in mother tongue. From the fifth grade onwards most of the schools offer education in English language.

The provision in RTE and its implications in Goa

The Right to Education Act brings the upper primary education, which extends up to eighth grade underelementary education. The parents and the schools are confused and worried about the new mother tongue policy that will be extended to eighth grade. With no clear idea from the part of the state government on the issue, the parent and the schools forced the government to alter it current mother tongue policy for primary education. Parents who were involved in the issue considered English as language which is badly required to survive in the present day globalized world.

The opposition from every corner

The parents who stood for English language as MoI convened meetings to exhibit their strength and such meetings received huge support and thus won over the counter movements that were for mother tongue. Even the movement in support of mother tongue received the same amount of support as that of those who stood for English. The government of Goa decided to offer primary schools a choice to switch over to English if the parents backed the decision in a referendum to be held by the schools under the supervision of the department of the education. While declaring the decision, the government was forced to ignore the report prepared by a committee which was appointed by the state government to formulate its mother tongue policy in the 1990s.

Those who stood for mother tongue

The decision was not found to be fair enough by those who were supporting the mother tongue movement. For instance, P R Nadkarni, the ex-chairperson of the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, took the issue to the court where the state was forced into the court for following faulty procedures in executing the new Medium of Instruction policy. Even though the issue is with the court and is awaiting court ruling, it still remains to boil.

The Detention Policy in RTE

Another issue popped up when the state decided to implement the no detention policy as proposed by the RTE act which is applicable till eighth grade. The Goa government decided to follow the provision of the RTE act after the results of 2010 were declared. This decision followed a tug of war between the All Goa School Headmasters Association and the directorate of education. The heads of the schools refused to execute the decision taken by the state, where the schools had to promote the students who have failed to the next level. More over the education rules in Goa were not properly amended for following the provisions of the act.

A timely intervention by the education minister of Goa has brought a solution to the issue where the minister promised to put a system in place for the no detention policy from the next academic period onwards provided the headmasters promote the students failed in the previous year.

The grading system and the issues that followed

The education board in Goa decided to change from the present marks system to grading system at the tenth grade and twelfth grade public exams in 2011. The board had been doing home work for a while with the grading system already in place in ninth and eleventh grade. Since it was the first year of adopting the grading system at the public examinations, the state board decided to include marks as well as grades in the mark lists to make it easier for the students to understand the system.

This move was even dragged in to controversy, when the results of class 12 were published. The students were shocked with the results as hundreds of them got a score which was much lower than what they had expected. The state board was forced to re-look into the calculations of grades and it was found that 300 students who had passed in the exams were declared to have failed.

The state government of Goa had asked the education board to have a re-look into the grading system. Both marks and grading in public examinations will continue in 2012 also.

The unfulfilled promises

While the newly introduced policies resulted in chaos, the old promises made by the government remained unfulfilled.  The important among them was the issue of the computer teachers who did not agree to die down in 2011 as well. The situation became even worse as the government funded schools which were managed by the Catholic managements refused to place the computer teachers who were trained by the government.