Delhi govt playing with the future of children: Maken

The AAP government's decision to map students as part of its "arbitrary" 'Chunauti' project would lead to labelling of students as weak and bright "harming" them in the long run, Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said today.
In a press conference here, Maken lambasted the recent reforms in the education sector announced by the government, alleging the policy making process was "opaque", done "without consultation" with experts, and "arbitrarily" implemented.
"The government has brought in new reforms like the Chunauti policy, parent-teacher-meetings. After consulting experts, we have found that the policy is divisive and will bring down the morale of the students.

"If a girl child from a poor family is put into the bottom category, her parents won't send her to school, they will rather get her married or make her do housework," Maken said.
The party also released a five-point critique of the policies, which Maken said was prepared after a session with experts as the future of children was at stake.
The critique called for a "white paper" from the government on its approach to education so as to ensure that the initiatives were not violative of the Right to Education Act.

Maken also accused the government of "diluting" the curriculum by introducing 'Pragati' books which he said have "subplanted and not supplemented" official books in schools.

The new books have diluted the curriculum and done away with 75 per cent of the course "for the sake of simplicity", he alleged.
Maken claimed that reforms lack transparency as the stakeholders were not involved in chalking them out. "People don't know the approach of the government...They start anything. It's haphazard."
"Despite (Arvind) Kejriwal being a pioneer of RTI, there has been no clarity on how the policies work, how they were introduced, who the private organisations involved are or the terms of agreement they function under.
"It is true that budget allocated for education has doubled, but what is important is how the money has been spent. The amount spent does not add up as the expenditure is more on publicity," Maken said.