Goan Education Policy Vision

By Mr. Plastino D'Costa

Long time ago, a new Education Policy was promised by the Chief Minister, the draft of which was to be released on January 8th 2008. However, the promise keeps getting deferred and now it seems that the Chief Minister has been avoiding a definite date to avoid embarrassment. If a draft Education policy takes so long to come out, one can imagine the state of implementation.

Ideally all governments are supposed to regulate, through a regulator, the teaching imparted by educational institutions. But since the Government of Goa’s record on education (and every other domain they are involved in) is pathetic, it might now be a good time for a sincere Chief Minister to actually free the Education Department from government interference or entrust it to a more professional autonomous regulator.

The history of Government interference in education in Goa has been miserable. Politicians have an unpleasant habit of taking easy and popular decisions, keeping in mind their narrow vote banks. Education in Goa is already suffering for numerous structural problems. This was compounded by a highly popular decision that our leaders took by making the mother tongue the medium of instruction for primary schools and English for secondary school. On that day they effectively messed up one of the major strengths of Goans. One can understand not-so-intelligent politicians, with no vision for the future being naïve. But that decision also involved supposedly great intellectual leaders, unless it was a conscious effort to keep the Generation Next less educated.

That one decision changed the destiny of Goa directly or indirectly and today most of Goa’s problems are as a result of that very decision. Families in villages were overnight forced to abandon their comfortable ancestral homes and rush to buy second homes to be in close proximity to English-medium schools at that time available only in cities. This effectively broke up the joint families with couples with children being forced to split into nuclear families. Of course some couples used that as an excuse to stay away from nagging siblings or in-laws.

Parents avoided village schools not because of the quality of education, but because they could not cope up with change in medium of instruction, as they were themselves educated in the English medium. Slowly despite good infrastructure, village schools deteriorated as they went out of favour with parents.

Second homes purchased by anxious parents artificially increased demand and inflated prices. All of a sudden our cities became chaotic as parents chose convenience over quality of life of a village house. This one decision changed a geographically dispersed education system in Goa into one of cramped up schools in cities. Today the ‘builders lobby’ has become a word of abuse for Goans, but this is not the lobby that forced people to move from villages to cities. They merely facilitated the supply to meet the demand created by our leaders without foresight.

Now our leaders have hit upon yet another novel idea which only proves that education is really the last priority for our leaders. How else can one explain this new decision to move city based schools to the outskirts? The reason given is decongesting cities of vehicular traffic created by the parents who drop their wards to school. Take the example of Margao city: if the government is honestly committed to decongest cities why can’t it relocate the many petrol pumps in Margao city which cater to people all the way from Cavelosim, Carmona, Orlim, Varca, Benaulim, Navelim, Chinchinim, Assolna, Velim, Betul and so many other villages. Can’t they spread petrol pumps to the villages? Don’t we all know that people entering Margao to fill petrol far exceeds that of parents entering Margao to drop their children?

The Government instead of moving the numerous unorganized markets of Margao, some housed in pathetic conditions, is more than willing to move neat, clean and well maintained school campuses with compounds, just because they happen to be in the middle of the city. Is it the real estate that interests the government or is it because decent school managements are soft targets for bullying?

Another reason for the deterioration of Education is the huge subsidy the government provides to schools that choose to follow its decision of enforcing mother tongue as medium of instruction. Why should Goans who don’t have school-going children pay in the form of taxes for schoolchildren which are not theirs? As if education were not enough, why should well off Goans let their children have Mid-day meals and burden the exchequer? Goa may be the only place where children have a free lunch at school and accompany their parents at dinner in posh hotels.

Because of this subsidy Goans have become averse to any type of payments school management might request. The subsidy provided by the government may be more than sufficient for some schools but it is not adequate for other high quality schools. These high quality schools are unable to upgrade or grow because the government limits the subsidy and does not allow them to tap any other resources from parents.

The time has come for high-quality school management to rethink if they should remain aided and thereby bonded to government high handedness. It makes sense that government allows aided schools who have carved a niche for themselves to start charging students. A timely phasing-out of government subsidy could be announced by the government but for that we need to ask ourselves hard questions and take hard decisions.

Considering the above, the Chief Minister will do great service to Goa if in this Education policy he seizes the opportunity and frees the Education Department from government interference by giving it complete autonomy in the true sense. At least all the hard decisions of medium of instructions, subsidized education will be taken by an autonomous body that does not have any political compulsions.

At a time when politicians want their presence felt in possibly every domain that exists in Goa, it will take a courageous Chief Minister to keep politicians away from education. If he checks his conscience, a Chief Minister from Margao will understand that school managements of Loyola, Manovikas, Presentation, Bhatikar, Vidya Vikas, Fatima are much more trustworthy and honorable than some of his colleagues in the government.

Above Article appeared on 3rd September 2008 on Herald - Goa