An alumna of Pune and Lucknow universities with a Ph D from UC Berkeley, Dr. Urvashi Sahni is a social entrepreneur and founder-principal of the CBSE-affiliated Study Hall School, Lucknow (estb. 1986). Shalini Sinha, the incumbent principal of Study Hall, has also contributed to these responses.

Are you satisfied with the Union Budget 2018-19 allocation of Rs.85,010 crore for education?

I won’t be happy till we spend as much as other developed countries do on education. They realise that developing their social infrastructure — i.e, health and education, is as, if not more important than developing business and industry. More importantly, budgets must be used optimally. With strong political will and wise and honest spending, much can be achieved. For that, the political class should care about children who attend government schools. Unfortunately they don’t. No budget increase is going to fix this indifference.

How satisfied are you with the quality of exam boards’ syllabuses/curriculums and prescribed textbooks? 

Our curriculums are archaic and outdated as also our board exams. Some efforts have been made to reform the CBSE syllabus and assessment system. But radical reform is required. We need curriculums and exams which prescribe and test inquiry, critical thinking, and collaborative skills. Nor am I in favour of making preparedness for the workforce the primary goal of education. That is a relic of the industrial age. Lessons in math, science and languages are important, but so are lessons in equality, empathy and analytical thinking. 

What are your Top 5 suggestions for reforming K-12 education?

• The focus of primary-secondary education should change from access to quality and improved student learning outcomes. Learning must encompass physical, social and emotional well-being; culture and the arts; literacy and communication; cognition; numeracy and mathematics; science and technology.

• Make a paradigm shift in learning from the information-based teaching model to inquiry-based learning and testing models. 

• Make schools happy places where students and teachers meaningfully engage with each other, explore their potential, develop imagination and reasoning capabilities.

• All teaching should have social and political focus. Children must think critically about problems such as poverty, gender, caste and religious discrimination and related inequalities.

• Improve government schools. The government should organise its system better; revise curricula, teacher training and administrative policies.