Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Background
Ladakh has had a tradition of education movements starting from the early
1950s, when our leaders launched a movement for school enrolment, bringing
the enrolment rates far above the national average despite all the
disadvantages that Ladakh suffered. In the recent past the Hill Council, in
partnership with Ladakhi NGOs and village communities, launched another
movement in 1994 called Operation New Hope (ONH). Here the issue of
quality was addressed. As a result of the measures taken, i.e. a massive
teachers training drive, formation of Village Education Committees (VECs)
for local ownership and accountability in schools, and publication of locally
adapted textbooks, the Matric exam results, which used to hover around 5%
until 1998, rose to 55% by 2004.
Introduction
While many of the major ills in the government school system were addressed
by the first phase of ONH movement, there is a serious need to further resolve
some of the remaining ills, in order to make government schools a source of
quality education for all — rich and poor, rural and urban. The introduction of
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in 2003 formally institutionalised most of the
initiatives begun by ONH. Yet SSA needed to be locally adapted as the issues
facing Ladakh are so different from the rest of India. Apart from the unique
geography and culture, other social factors are also different. To cite a few
examples, school enrolment in Ladakh has been near 100% for years, except
in certain nomadic communities. On the other hand retention is a serious issue
but again, unlike the rest of the country, here the issue of drop-out is much
more serious among boys than girls. Also, since for the last 10 years Ladakh
has seen ONH, a home-grown education reform movement much like SSA,
this should ideally be used to catapult it to the next stage of reform rather than
clubbing it with the rest of the state to start all over from scratch.
This document tries to explore these major challenges facing our schools
today due to which they are unable to attract children despite the fact that in
Ladakh the government expenditure per child per month is a staggering Rs.
1,500 (comparable to the best private schools in the country). LMSSA is also
an attempt to translate into reality the goals in education sector set in the
‘Vision Document-Ladakh-2025’, adopted by LAHDC, Leh in 2005. The
current document, which aims to serve as a policy framework for the Ladakh
Autonomous Hill Development Council Leh, will be followed by a ‘Plan of
Action’ with details of actual implementation over the next five years.
LMSSA could also be seen as the second phase of LAHDC’s own Operation
New Hope. It aims to be a partnership of government, civil society
organisations and village communities to take the education reform movement
in Ladakh to a new height — where government schools become as good as
any other schools and can realise the vision of the ‘Neighbourhood School’ or
the ‘Common School’ floated by Kothari Commission in 1966. We hope that
in this way, apart from benefiting ourselves, we can also benefit the rest of the
state and the country by becoming a model. A model is most powerful when it
succeeds in a place that is otherwise considered harsh, backward and difficult,
as it can generate the feeling—
“If a place like Ladakh can do it, any place can do it.”
This perhaps, could be Ladakh’s way of repaying the gratitude we owe to the
state and the nation for all the unconditional aid and support we have received
so far.
1. A Holistic Approach to Education
Apart from better exam results, today we need an
education system which strengthens our children and
youth in every way, which enables and empowers
them in the modern world without sacrificing the
depth of traditional knowledge, values and wisdom
inherent in our unique culture. A system that makes
our children not just producers and consumers but
rather stewards of this mother earth and all the living
beings on it. A system that caters not just to the 3 Rs,
but to a balanced development of the ‘3 Hs’ in every
child. A bright Head for knowledge and ideas, skilled Hands for self
reliance, and above all a kind Heart for harmony and peaceful
coexistence in this diverse world.
2. Locally Relevant Curriculum
Ladakh with its distinct cultural, geographical and environmental situation
needs a curriculum and teaching learning materials that are contextualised so
that children can relate to what is taught and are strengthened rather than
weakened by the process of schooling. We need to carry further the
programme started under ONH to adapt the curriculum and publish localised
text books. But even after that learning should not be restricted to the
classroom, the teachers and the text books alone. For true and meaningful
learning, and not just ‘schooling’, we shall have to design a system whereby
the whole society and the whole village environment becomes a learning
resource, with the teacher as a facilitator; where the school actively facilitates
the passing down of essential knowledge, skills and values from the older
generation to the new.
On the other hand importance has to be given to the special needs of the
minorities within Ladakh, just as Ladakh seeks special attention from the state
and the country. In this regard the nomadic people in Changthang region need
special attention towards making education relevant to their lifestyle and
livelihoods, while linguistic minorities like the Brogpa (Dard) population also
need attention, at least in early primary education. While SSA’s extra
emphasis on enrolling the girl child may be out of place in Ladakh, the issue
of inclusion of children with special needs (disabled) seems to be a bigger
need.
3. Teacher Training
In-service Training: An apex educational resource centre
Trained and passionate teachers are the soul of any education system worth
the name. Since accessibility to a state level resource centre is very difficult
due to our remoteness, and since cultural and geographical conditions are very
different here, Ladakh needs to have an apex educational resource centre
within our reach, for high quality training of trainers for both Leh and Kargil.
The District Institute of Education & Training (DIET) is of course the ideal
place for this. But the DIET so far has itself been ailing and starved of
manpower and other resources, and needs to be properly functionalised. If
this is difficult within the present set-up of SSA, then separate resources could
be mobilised by the Hill Council along with the NGOs to hire the best key
resource persons on contract, from within Ladakh and throughout the country.
This centre would train and support trainers who would then act as resource
persons at zonal and cluster levels. Apart from this, the apex team could also
continue developing training and teaching/learning materials, and localisation
of curriculum and publication of text-books.
Pre-service training
While the above Educational Resource Centre could ensure quality in-service
training under the SSA programme, it would also be important to arrange
facilities for good quality pre-service training programmes offering D.Ed and
B.Ed degrees, whether through the DIET or through private/NGO institutions.
However for this to work, the government will have to make such
qualifications a basic criterion at the time of recruitment. There is no reason
whatsoever in this day and age for the government to recruit untrained
teachers with a mere class XII or a plain BA degree and then sponsor them
with full salary for in-service D.Ed and B.Ed degrees. This scheme, perhaps
launched when qualified teachers were scarce, has outlived its utility and
should be closed as in most states.
In this massive reconstruction activity we are lucky that the Indian Army’s
Sadbhavana outreach and other donors have already expressed interest in
joining hands with the Hill Council.
9. Resource Mobilisation
All the above measures will require sizable financial resources, but with the
already prevailing enthusiasm among the people and political leadership it is
not impossible to raise this. While funds under SSA and other programmes
should be used in a synergetic way, special packages, if really required, can be
requested from both the State and the Centre for this important sector in this
remote and disadvantaged region. On the other hand the public enthusiasm for
a change in Ladakh’s educational state is so strong that a massive resource
mobilisation drive can also be organised among the Ladakhi urban and rural
population through the VECs. During a similar drive in the late nineties,
SECMOL with the help of a seed contribution from His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, managed to help the VECs raise roughly ten lakh rupees within a year.
Similar but larger scale campaigns could be launched now for the Ladakh
model of SSA. For example, it might be possible for the Hill Council to float a
voluntary “education tax/contribution” on all tourism-related businesses in
Ladakh, which the business establishments could pass on to the clients.
The above collection of local financial resources could then be used as a
leverage point to raise further grants from national and international donors,
who are always happy to see a matching local contribution.
Ultimate Vision
The ultimate vision of the programme would be to jump-start the government
educational machinery to a level of quality where the educated and the
influential of the society can also entrust their children to state schools.
Together with the quality enrichment programme within the schools, a parallel
campaign would try to build public opinion to make it a moral obligation for
all elected representatives and all teachers/officials to send their own children
to the schools they run, by the year 2010. This would be the ultimate
expression of confidence in our own conviction, and once this happens there
might be enough stake and accountability within the system to make this
change irreversible. It may sound far-fetched for the rest of the country but in
Ladakh, after ten years of reforms, this process has already started and there
are instances of people including some leaders bringing their children back
from private schools into an improved local government school. Elsewhere in
the world whether it is Sweden, Denmark or even a monarchy like Bhutan, the
top national leaders including the prime minister and the royal family send
their children to the same government schools where the children of common
citizens go.
This would be the model we could be presenting to the rest of the country and
the developing world. That economic segregation of children into rich private
schools and poor government schools will lead to conflict rather than
progress. When 95% of India’s children are forced into schools that are
among the world’s worst, it is unlikely that there will be peace of mind in
future, for the 5% who go to schools that are among the world’s best. Apart
from general social unrest, an unskilled labour force will mean that India’s
capitalists will also not be able to compete with, say, their Asian counterparts.
A Befitting Launch
Finally a programme of this scale and ambition should have a befitting launch,
to raise public awareness and enthusiasm at local and national level and to
instil a sense of confidence and pride in the programme. Therefore, we are
most fortunate to see its launch by the President of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam
on 28th July 2006. This is most appropriate, both because of Dr Kalam’s love
for children and his vision of India as a developed nation by the year 2020.