He was speaking after inaugurating an educational conference and felicitation ceremony for merit students of SSLC-2013 and heads of institutions with cent percent results organized by the Mangalore City High School Headmasters' and Pre-University College Principals' Association in Mangalore on Wednesday.
Lamenting that education system continues to remain numbers oriented, Fr. Serrao said that there is a need to bring in other aspects of personality development in schooling as well. “At the moment, our examination system only tests the memory power and to an extent the reasoning power of students. The world outside has moved beyond IQ and aspects such as EQ (Emotional Quotient) and even Social and Spiritual Quotients (SQ). Learning of skills and behaviour must be given equal importance as academics. We have seen in the past that some terrorists were found to be doctors and engineers who scored good marks,” he opined.
Stressing on the need to do away with the notion of judging schools by their result percentages and the number of distinctions and first classes they get, Fr Serrao urged people and education department officials alike to also consider the effort schools put in to improve standards internally.
“We don't have any system in place to ascertain the effort schools put in to improve the standard of students coming to them from other institutions. No one looks at the improvement in marks scored by a student studying in a school after having come from another institution with low marks but everyone wants to look at the overall percentage of the school”, he said.
Fr. Serrao further pointed out that while there are RTE activists, RTI activists, student associations, government officials looking into school functioning etc, no group or section of activists dedicate time and energy to protect and address teachers' rights.
Dr. Ismail, Principal of Badria College, Mangalore, and member of the executive committee of the Association, in his introductory address brought to the notice of Moses Jayashekhar, DDPI, DK, the problem of excessive training programmes for teachers being held by the Department due to which running classes in schools in the last academic year has been difficult due to shortage of teachers. There is lack of coordination between certain offices of the Department and the schools which needs to be addressed, he said.
Mr. Jayashekhar, who presided over the programme, said that since new BEOs have taken charge and reports of lack of coordination are being received by the Department, a meeting involving all officials and stake holders from the Department as well as schools will be called soon. Since the district had a disappointing SSLC result this time, steps to improve results during this academic year will also be discussed in the meeting, he said.
The DDPI used the platform to convey to school heads, teachers, students and parents to create dengue and malaria awareness in school assemblies, through jathas and other means about maintaining cleanliness in surroundings of schools and houses.
Fr Lawrence D'Souza, Outgoing Secretary and Former Principal, Rosario College, was felicitated by the Association on the occasion along with head-teachers of schools coming under the Association who retired this year. Student toppers of different schools were also feted besides schools obtaining 100% result.
Aloysius D'Souza, President of the Association, was present.
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