Today I received a letter from the Panchayat requesting me to attend a New Education Policy Awareness Training Program on 28 August in Moira in the Panchayat hall. It is in reference to the letter from the Block Development Officer Mapusa. I assume that this is open to the people of the village although I noticed that many teachers were copied in. I assume that this process will be repeated all over Goa.
Googling I found that the Ministry of Human Resources and Development has begun a consultation process wrt the New Education Policy 2015. My first impression was that on the one hand as usual the Govt. wants to increase State control on recruitments and now dismissal of faculty and on the other wishes to reduce state funding of education. Browsing quickly through the documents I got the impression that the Consultation process has been framed in such a way that people would be forced to support the Policy. The way in which a village level meeting regarding education is held on a week day when many of the stakeholders will be at work stinks. I think that people would be wise to look at the documents carefully and seriously, think over them and form an appropriate response. I intend to go for the meeting to - if nothing else - find out whether the process will be a transparent one or one where we will be dictated what response is required of us. Here is the website where the various documents related to the NEP 2015 and the consultation process can be found: http://mhrd.gov.in/nep-new Augusto