UT education dept bats for ‘no detention’ till Class 8

At a recent meeting on the framing of the ‘new education policy’ organised by the ministry of human resource and development (MHRD) in Delhi on October 31, the UT education department submitted a suggestion to do away with the ‘No detention’ policy, keeping in mind dismal performances of government schools students, especially in Class 9.

UT education secretary Sarvjit Singh and the director public instructions (schools) Rubinderjit Singh Brar had attended the meeting, where they discussed the 20 themes of higher education and 13 themes of school education.

The department has sought a week’s time from the MHRD to submit various suggestions for each of the themes categorised under school education.

Commenting on the suggestion, director public instructions (schools) Rubinderjit Singh Brar said, “At the meeting held in Delhi, we submitted a suggestion to abolish the ‘no detention’ policy. We are yet to officially present our suggestion in writing As a part of the ongoing project by the MHRD to develop the national education policy 2016, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has uploaded survey forms on its official website in order to obtain feedback from various stakeholders including school heads, teachers, parents and managers to share their views online before November 9 on school-related issues. One of the questions in a survey has specifically asked if the teachers are satisfied with the no detention policy up to Class 8.

“I believe that the no detention policy will soon be done away with, as there is already a consensus among teachers considering the poor results in government schools,” Brar added.

None of the teachers in government schools are in favour of the policy as a majority of them say that instead of helping children, the no detention policy has rather ruined the entire learning environment letting kids take exams for granted.

Vinod Kumar Sharma, principal of Government Model High School, Sector 34 said, “Till the time, we do not abolish the ‘no detention’ policy, the standard of the city government schools can never improve. Despite the fact that student enrollment and teacher recruitment has increased, but surprisingly, there is no improvement in results and the credit goes to this system.”

He added, “The ‘no detention’ policy had ideally come into practice to help students continue with their education because there were times when a lot of students were reportedly dropping out from school after getting failed in a particular class. However, this system rather became a hindrance to the students’ learning process and the teachers were left with no alternative but to pass a student without any conditions, no matter if the student does not even deserve 30 percent of the marks.”

Meanwhile, Anujit Kaur, principal of Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 16 said, “We recently raised this issue with the education department that the ‘no detention’ policy is not helping anybody.”

“There were two suggestions which were given at the meeting including that the no detention policy should be completely abolished after Class 5 and students should be detained in Class 6 if they do not perform well,’ added Kaur.

“Secondly, teachers had suggested re-introduction of the boards for Class 5, where students were prepared to face the next tough class,” said Kaur.