Transforming Education, Transforming Life
- Education plays all-important roles in an individual’s life; it is not just all about studying and getting good marks. Education is more than reading, writing and arithmetic. Factually, it is a means to discover and invent new things and create new knowledge and ideas, to become innovative, etc. Secondly, education is the most important investment for a country and state to achieve inclusive growths, create opportunities, avenues and choices to the people and future .It is also critically an important weapon in reducing poverty and inequality. In fact , real education should always be able to provide people critical skills and tools to help themselves and their children ; help people work better and create vast opportunities for sustainable and viable economic growth in all times, help improve health ;encourage transparency ,good governance and stability hand helps fighting against graft and corruption .One should realize that education is that is the energy to unlock country’s or state’s potential for economic growth, overall development and empowerment .Our Government shall aim to produce the educated persons that possess the ability to differentiate between right and wrong or good and evil. Just simply establishing many schools without proper infrastructures and supports for effective administration and policy program cannot produce quality, capable, able and potential human capital as has been largely seen in Sikkim for more than two decades. Realising the importance of education in all spheres of life and government mechanisms , a Comprehensive New Education Policy shall be formulated for transforming education in Sikkim
- Minimum 30% of state budget shall be invested to completely reform education sector in Sikkim.
- For farming education policy and its implementation a strong team of Advisory Body shall be constituted comprising of Education Minister ,Academic Advisor ,Education/Academic Council represented by different institutions, Head of Human Resources Development ,Educationists, Academic officers ,Senior Teachers ,Young dynamic intelligent teachers of different disciplines and Grassroots (for primary and elementary education)
- For administration and academic function, Education Department and all other educational institutions shall be given autonomy without political indulgence, interference and intervention.
- For any demand of school or institution, no political shall be invited for school /institution function or programmes in order to keep school environment strictly apolitical .Government shall act as a facilitating organization by according approval and sanction of the demand (s) submitted by school or educational institution.
- The education minister shall not be a mere elected one and degree holder rather one shall have g deeper knowledge domain no matter he/she is young or old.
- The head of the Education Department shall be appointed from academic background.
- Sikkim state education council and Sikkim state education board shall be established with a view of creating and producing intelligent/skilled human resources who can compete with others students from outside state.
- Bringing the elementary education and its teaching facilities under the local administration undermines the very foundation of education of education philosophy of imparting effective, standard and quality education to the young growing pupils .All levels of education and he teaching facilities and staff shall be brought under the Education Department ,Teaching professional shall be respected.
- Value of education shall be promoted .Residential schools and skill-based education shall be encouraged, developed and strengthened.
- Education shall be free of cost up to tertiary level. Free higher (masters )education shall be provided to financially weal students
- There shall have teaching Recruitment Policy and Guidelines .Recruitment shall be done to meet the minimum requirement of teaching strength of each school and educational institution. Units/Class/room –wise teacher and student –teacher ration of 10:1 shall be achieved in the long run.
- All the teaching facilities of the primary and elementary education shall be trained for Montessori education .new recruitment of teachers shall be done from the trained Montessori teachers without interview at the primary and elementary education.
- The food item for mid –day meal shall be standardized as per the standards of children health nutrition .Well trained manpower shall be recruited to prepare and serve mid day meal to children in all schools.
- Teaching children of 21st century with technology shall be the top priority, Teacher and Teaching Development Programs shall be launched.
- Learning and Training Centre for teaching development shall be established.
- All the teaching facilities shall be provided professional development activities (refresher sources, training and similar other allied program) to meet the emerging challenges of teaching profession.
- For general, there shall have the state –of-the-are Sikkim Library and learning Centre in all districts.
- Improvement of basic infrastructure and amenities shall be done in all educational institutions.
- Not all teachers shall have to be the teachers till retirements. There shall have Teacher’s Promotion Policy.
- There shall have Teacher‘s Transfer Policy in the state.
- Eco-friendly Digital Teaching shall be established, promoted and strengthened in all schools and educational institutions.
- Teachers who bring out 100% results in any subjects in class VIII, X and XII standards shall be provided increments and awards on the state day function.
- English as well a Mother Language shall be promoted and strengthened by creating facilities in government schools.
- Teachers’ quarters’ hall be constructed in school campus with all modern facilities.
- All schools shall be provided with CCTV camera.
- There shall have well-furnished Library and Learning Hall with computer and internet facilities in all schools.
- There shall have Mission 100% Functional Literacy and Mission Developing Noble Man power.
- Sikkim shall achieve School Drop Outs Free state, various career oriented vocational streams shall be introduces right from eh primary level.
- There shall have Start Up Scheme at Sr. Sec Schools and above.
- There shall have Teachers Emergency Fund for Government teachers.
- There shall have Science and Social Laboratories in all senior secondary schools and above.
- All schools and Educational institutions shall have their own account, sanctioning and utilization of fund,
- All schools shall provide with Transport Facility.
- Keeping the view of chilling December at higher elevations, winter vacation of school and educational institutions shall be of two months and 15 days summer breaks.
- There shall have no recruitment of temporary and Adhoc teachers, and all the existing temporary and adhoc teachers shall be regularised.
- Sikkim history, ethnic agriculture and ethnic food shall be included in school curriculum. Ethnic community traditional knowledge and integration or culture shall be included in school curriculum.
- Quality Enriched Programme for teachers shall be developed and strengthened based on the innovative methods of improving quality learning.
- Higher Academic Institutions on different fields (sports, music, fine art , etc) shall be established.
- Good career-focused learning system and facilities shall be established.
- Exposure / excursion of students to educational institutions and other academically important places elsewhere in the country shall be promoted and strengthened.
- Autonomous educational institutes for advanced learning and research shall be established.
- Sikkim shall be made Quality Research Hub in India.
- World –class public schools shall be established I all districts for economically weaker section of children,
- A model (Gurucool) based residential school with the state-of-the-art facilities at par with the best schools of country shall be established.
- There shall have Sikkim State Council of Research for formulating policies and guidance for instituting research programs in different disciplines.
- There shall have State Body to support and co-ordinate the universities (central and state funded and privately owned) established within Sikkim.
- All Sikkim languages shall be recognized, being a lingua franca of Sikkim, shall be further protected and promoted.
- Sanskrit Language and yoga education shall be promoted and strengthened Sanskrit Language and Yoga teachers shall be recruited.
- There shall have Education Index for all schools and educational institutions.
- There shall have Teaching Innovation Fund and Fund for Innovative Pedagogy (scholastic).
- Teaching excellence awards and recognition of remarkable improvements hall be provided to teachers.
- Financial support to foster student achievements (e.g. counselling, career advice, mentoring, etc.) shall be provided to teachers.
- There shall have methods for self-evaluation of experimentations, peer-reviewing, benchmarking of practices, etc, for teachers and students.
- There shall have training –cum –coaching institutes, counselling centre and services for the aspirants of union Public Service Examinations, Medical Examinations, Management Examinations, etc.
- Sikkim shall be able to produce human capital of great thinkers, philosophers, scientists, scholars, academicians, writers, poets, statesmen, political leaders, business tycoons, artists, musicians, social workers, etc. in the long run.