BY RAJAN NARAYAN

The shoddy state of higher education has been exposed by the Ad Hoc committee on Education, which has drawn attention to the obsolete syllabi and acute shortage of staff.

RAHUL GANDHI need not have wasted his time interacting with students of the Goa University to find out how pathetic the state of education is in the state of Goa. Never mind that the Congress-affiliated non existent National Students Union of India did not succeed in hijacking the interaction. It will be recalled that the NSUI and the Goa Pradesh Youth Congress Committee, instigated by Dayanand Narvekar, had threatened to demand the revival of the IT Habitat project in Dona Paula to spite Babush Monserrate, the Education Minister, who had hijacked the people’s agitation against the allotment of plots to land sharks in the IT Habitat.

Under pressure from the BJP’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Registrar of the University, Dr Mohan Sangodkar, had to withdraw the notice he had sent demanding that all post graduate students should compulsorily attend the interaction with Rahul Gandhi. The Registrar was also forced to stipulate that no political party’s flags or politicians would be allowed to attend the meeting with Rahul Gandhi on the sports grounds of the University. But Rahul Gandhi need not have gone through the exercise of interacting with the University students. He only had to look at the First Report of the Demands Related Ad Hoc Committee on Education, which was placed on the table of the house in the winter session of the Legislative Assembly last year to realise how retarded educationists and education in Goa is.

EDUCATION POLICY

UNDER the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, monitoring formats had been designed to evaluate the quality of education in various states and to find out if the national education policy was being implemented. The government of Goa had also committed itself to not only coming out with a policy on pre school education, but also enacting a legislation to control preschool education, which is now a major racket. Indeed a decision regarding legislation to regulate preschool education has been pending since 1994. In its recommendation the Ad Hoc Committee on education "deplored the inordinate delay in formulating the pre school education and introducing the Pre School Nursery Education Act." The committee also observed that there has been no control over the growth of these institutions and that they are being established without any permission from the government and are charging exorbitant fees.

Commenting on the syllabus in schools from standard I to XII and the incorporation of local content, the Committee has observed that the local component incorporated in the text books have always been a cause of controversy. This could be because the so called expert panel groups appointed for the purpose are not well versed on the subject or are politically motivated. Apparently, the contents of the books are not even scrutinised before printing resulting in Konkani material appearing in Marathi books and vice versa. Computer education is, in theory, available in most schools in Goa with the additional benefit of being one of the privileged states in the country to receive free education software from the Bill Gates foundation, including kids encyclopaedia. The Committee was not convinced that the educational software received from the Bill Gates foundation had been efficiently used. The Committee pointed out that the teachers themselves lacked training in innovative teaching methods. The extremely high drop out rate at the fifth and eight standard level has been commented on in the past and, therefore, we shall not touch upon it here.

HIGHER EDUCATION

IF the state of primary and secondary education is bad, the state of higher education in Goa is even more pathetic. The Directorate of Higher Education was established in 1994 with staff from the Education Department and the Secretariat. Though the department was sanctioned 22 posts, apparently only ten posts have been filled so far. Commenting on the irresponsible attitude of successive state governments towards higher education, the Ad Hoc Committee has commented "The Committee is totally dissatisfied with the functioning of the Directorate of Higher Education. Even after 13 years of its establishment, the Directorate is still in a stage of infancy. The Directorate does not have proper premises or facilities and is not equipped with man power or infrastructure for implementing the schemes of the government."

The Goa University was established in 1984. On paper at least, it has ten faculties, including 22 post graduate departments. The University has 45 affiliated colleges, of which 22 are professional and 23 are non professional. There are five government colleges at the degree level in the faculty of arts science, commerce and home Science. The ground reality is that the majority of the professional colleges, particularly those run by the government, are grossly understaffed. Much worse, the syllabus is outdated and has not been updated for several years.

PROFESSIONAL COLLEGE

COMMENTING on the obsolete syllabus of the professional colleges of the state the legislative committee has pointed out that as technology is rapidly changing it is absolutely necessary to revise the syllabus frequently so that the students can keep up with the changing times. The Committee recommended that the University periodically revises the syllabus of the courses conducted so that Goan students can compete with the students at the all India level. The committee also stressed the need to update the syllabus of the non professional courses. Goan students are not equipped to compete with students from other states either in terms of admission to centres of excellence like the IIT and the IIMs or for jobs because of the outdated syllabus, the poor infrastructure and the acute shortage of teachers.

How acute the shortage of teachers in the state in professional colleges is, is dramatised by the fact that the post of principal in the Goa College of Pharmacy and the Goa College of Architecture have yet to be filled. Many posts of professors are also vacant in the pharmacy and architecture colleges. In the Government Engineering College at Farmagudi, while the sanctioned strength of the teaching facility is 106, there are 39 positions vacant which have lapsed. Apparently some of the posts of lecturers have not been filled since 1999.

POLYTECHNIC

THE condition of the polytechnic institutes is not much better. In the Curchorem institute, eight posts have been vacant since February 2008. In the Bicholim polytechnic, one post of head of the department and five posts for lecturers have been vacant for the last five years. Maybe this is why only two of the 20 students who opted for civil engineering passed whereas in electrical engineering and mining all the students failed in the year 2006-07. In the government polytechnic at Altinho, of the 247 vacant posts, six posts of head of the Department, 21 posts of lecturers and 23 non teaching posts are yet to be filled.

In the absence of qualified heads of departments and lecturers, which is a chronic problem in government run professional colleges and polytechnics, it has been a practice to employ lecturers on a contract or lecture basis. Commenting on the severe shortage of qualified faculty in the professional colleges and institutions, the Ad Hoc Committee has expressed surprise that though teaching staff is not available on a regular basis, they seem to be available on a contract basis. The obvious inference is that the contract staff is not qualified for the post of lecturers. While it is mandatory that in professional colleges and even in non professional colleges, a first class post graduate degree is the prescribed qualification, due to their non availability second class post graduates and some times even graduates who have just passed out of the same institutions are employed on a contract basis.

QUALITY

THIS obviously affects the quality of teaching because contract staff not only lack the minimum specified qualification, but have no commitment to the institution. The Ad Hoc Committee has stressed that the norms fixed by the All India Council for Technical Education must be strictly observed. Another problem, of course, in recruitment of professionally qualified staff both in professional and non professional colleges is the requirement that knowledge of Konkani is essential for recruitment. The Committee has recommended that necessary changes should be made in the recruitment rules to enable the employment of teachers from outside the state if qualified teachers are not available within the state.

The biggest bane of education in Goa is the politicisation of appointments not only to teaching posts in the professional and non professional colleges but the politics in the appointment in even crucial posts like the director of Technical Education and the director of Higher Education. Depending on who the education minister is, the post of director of Higher Education has always rotated between Baskar Nayak or Edwin Gomes who, because of the uncertainty of their jobs, continue to hold on to their permanent posts as principals of government colleges. The University is itself a hotbed of politics with appointments to top posts including the Registrar’s post being made not on merit but on political consideration. The extent to which recruitment of teachers is politicised was dramatised by the fact that no appointment letters were issued to 52 teachers selected by the Goa Public Service Commission (GPSC) because less qualified candidates of some ministers could not make it to the list. There have been any number of instances where the GPSC recommendations have been ignored and candidates appointed on an ad hoc basis at the instance of politicians.

EDUCATION CZAR

ONE wishes the education administrators, starting with the minister for education to the directors of higher education, technical education and school education were at least idiots in the sense that Amir Khan’s film portrays. Unfortunately, the people at the head of the education establishment in the state are mentally challenged and hold their posts not because they are competent or qualified but because of the political patronage they enjoy at the highest levels. What can one expect of a state where a self confessed fifth (or is it an eighth standard failed) student becomes the education minister of the state. Presumably, Rahul Gandhi was not informed by the Congress Low Command and the Youth Congress that the Education Minister’s principle qualification was that of a money lender and a land shark and that his idea of discipline was to lead a gang of goons to attack the Panaji police station.