January 6, 2014
MUMBAI: The average eighth grader in India spends a cumulative 130 hours more in school in an academic year than his or her peers in an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country, reveals an analysis of global data.
In other words, Indian secondary students pack in nearly 21 days of six-hour classes more than those in advanced countries.
January 6, 2014
MUMBAI: The average eighth grader in India spends a cumulative 130 hours more in school in an academic year than his or her peers in an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country, reveals an analysis of global data.
In other words, Indian secondary students pack in nearly 21 days of six-hour classes more than those in advanced countries.
The issue of ideal school hours is being heatedly debated ever since the Maharashtra government held up the Right to Education Act mandating that schools needed to adhere to certain minimum hours of instruction time. The act requires students from first to fifth grade to spend 200 days involving 800 instructional hours in school and those from sixth to eighth standard to receive 1,000 instructional hours over 220 days.
In contrast, OECD primary and secondary students spend 749 and 873 hours on compulsory education on an average.
Primary school students in India are better off than their secondary counterparts, but still spend 51 hours more in classrooms than their OECD counterparts.
Arriving at ideal school hours has remained a contentious issue around the globe. Parents in cities like Mumbai are dreading the prospect of sending their children to school on weekends ever since the Maharashtra government brought out the rule book. Ironically, India's longer school hours have been cited by US authorities to make a case for keeping their schools open for longer. US' education secretary Arne Duncan had in 2009 stated that US students were at a "competitive disadvantage" as their students stayed in school for shorter hours than Indian and Chinese students.
School hours then vary significantly across the globe with secondary students in countries like Finland spending as little as 777 hours in a year to those in Mexico spending upto a gruelling 1,167 hours per year.
Avnita Bir prinicipal of RN Podar High School pertinently points out that longer school hours may not have any correlation with better education. "We shouldn't be regarding school hours as the only time of learning or think that keeping children in classrooms will help them learn. Today children learn informally on their gadgets and our education system needs to find ways to guide and facilitate such learning," she says.
She believes that children need to take ownership of their learning and the education system needs to move from teaching to learning.
Arundhati Chavan, president of the Parents' Teachers' Association United Forum too believes that India's education system needs to focus more on the quality of education than the hours spent in school.
"It is more important that existing working days are planned properly and time well utilised than extending the hours of school. Our academics is designed on rote learning which makes extended hours seem like a burden."
She worries that the additional hours too will be crammed with competitive curricular activity squeezing out any scope for creative development of a child. "Why not introduce activity-based learning or recreational activities in the extra hours?" she suggests.
Courtesy: TNN
