Unethical practice of detaining students in 9th standard ruins lives of hundreds of students.
What right Muslim managed schools have to delibe-rately fail a large number of Muslim students in 9th standard, just for the sake of statistically improving their 10th standard public examination results? Can it be term as genocide?
Mumbai has numerous Muslim managed schools that commit genocide of their own students in 9th standard just to get a pat on their back from their management. Thousand of poorest of the poor Muslim students studying in the Muslim managed schools are confined to life of abject poverty and ignominy. Many of them discontinue education and a large number of failed students develop inferiority complex and fail the board examination and join the growing army of menial workers.
Generation after generations face this injustice. Since the management of the educational institutes are very powerful and the poor parents of the victim students belong to the weakest section of the Muslim society, the injustice continues year after year. The community is totally oblivious of the fact.
A random survey of 27 schools in Mumbai conducted by the Islamic Voice revealed that 16 schools fail a large number of students. More than half the students were not promoted to the 10th standard in 16 schools. In seven other schools the failure rate was between 40 to 50 per cent.
Since the menace of holding back a large number of students in 9t standard has reached a gigantic proportion, the Mumbai regional board has recently launched the campaign to see whether the school has been holding back a disproportionately large number of students from entering 10th standard.
We have instructed all field-level education officers to inspect schools in order to gauge the magnitude of the problem. In some schools, an entire division is detained in 9th standard. These students often take the SSC exam privately and nearly 70 per cent of them come out successful. That shows that there was no need to detain them in the first place, says SSC board chairperson Shridhar Salunkhe.
Sources in the Department of Education pointed out that a few principals have stated openly that the students are failed in order to attain 100 per cent passes in board exams, as it the reputation of the school is hinged to SSC board results.
Najma Kazi, principal of Anjuman-i-Islam’s Saif Tayabji Girls School at Bombay Central considers it an unethical exercise. When a student is held back in 9th standard, his or her shame often prompts parents to take that child out of the school. Many such children face economic problems in continuing their studies. However, school principals justify the detentions as such students are laggards and are not likely to succeed.
The parents alleged that the schools do not have capable teachers and it is the failure on the part of the school authorities for not sending feedback of their wards’ performance to them. “Average students are ignored in the school while the relatively intelligent students manage to pass on their own,” fumed a parent.
Said Rehman Ansari, father of a student of a 9th standard student, “My son has been detained for no fault of his. The school has not taken enough efforts to complete the syllabus. Complaints from him were met with reprimands. Parents complain of poor coaching in mathematics and English. Why students fail?
Shabana Shaikh, Principal, AKI girls high school attributes the phenomenon to failure of teachers to create interest in the subject, large class size, poor pupil-teacher ratio and poor quality of education as a root cause for high rate of school dropouts.
“By the time children reach the stage of transition from 5th standard, the pressure of poor foundation mounts so much that they try to escape the situation by quitting school altogether,’’ says Shabana. She opined that shifting the emphasis from teaching to learning in a child-friendly atmosphere could be the only remedy.
Why this poor quality education?
The major reasons for the poor quality of education are: Overcrowded classrooms. Though the average student classroom ratio (SCR) at the national level is around 40:1, it is as high as 84:1 in several schools in city like Mumbai.
Inadequately trained teachers: No doubt most of the teachers have either D.Ed or B.Ed degrees. But it is not enough. A cursory observation of lessons of these teachers will reveal their incompetence to teach.
Monotonous teaching and learning process: Majority of schools and large numbers of teachers fail to make their teaching innovative and creative. The substandard content delivery makes learning a painful exercise.
Lack of accountability in the education system: The teachers are permanent and over protected. Hence even if they are pathetic, incompetent, and lazy they are not held accountable. Ultimately, it is the student who suffers.
High teacher pupil ratio: Large number of students in a classroom makes it difficult for the teacher to pay individual attention to each student. This results in demotivation of students.
Unless and until the community elders wake up to the problem and monitor the progress and performance of the teachers and schools by making effective use of Right to information Act, the school management and teachers will take the career and life of the students for granted. The massacre of poor Muslim must stop.
(The writer can be reached at mhl@rediffmail.com)
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May 2009 |