After asking schools to focus on education and avoid commercial activities, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is now ready to grade them.
A plan to accredit and grade schools in 2013-14 never took off but CBSE, which functions under the human resource development ministry, is now ready to start grading schools affiliated with it.
On Tuesday, Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar also told reporters that his ministry is now focusing on quality education and has embarked on a mission “sabko shiksha, achhi shiksha” (quality education for all) as an extension of the “sabka saath, sabka vikas” (with everyone, and development for everyone) slogan of the National Democratic Alliance government.
He said his ministry would allow more autonomy to high quality institutions.
He added that his ministry is for graded autonomy—the most stringent regulations for poor quality institutions and the least for high-quality ones.
The ministry has an accreditation and grading process for institutions of higher education in India but none for schools.
The accreditation process for higher education suffers from lack of transparency, but the government official said that CBSE has the credibility and the track-record to grade schools.
“The ministry is streamlining the higher education accreditation process to improve quality. The CBSE coming forward to do grading (of schools) will mean a better outcome across the entire education spectrum,” the official quoted above added.
Source: Livemint