The Question of Accountability in Education is Vital: China’s New Education Reform Shows the Way

 

Synopsis: Positioning states, society, and schools as service providers, China’s new education reform makes parents solely accountable for their children’s success in education; whereas in India’s New Education Policy 2020, accountability question hasn’t been addressed, parents have merely been coopted; states, schools, and tuition companies continue to play lion’s role with little accountability.

China has passed a new education reform law recently making parents responsible for family education; while state, schools, and society are to provide guidance, support, and service for the family education; consequently, parents are responsible for balanced development of children: education, physical exercise, rest, and recreation; making sure they’re not addicted to internet and are not overburdened with academic exercises.

Even before these reforms, China’s school education has been world’s envy for quite some time; in 2018, for 15-year-old students, their PISA scores in mathematics, science, and reading were highest among OECD countries. Education is said to be the true religion of Chinese people. And the result has been stellar.

In 2020, India had also passed a new education policy: a very detailed and much appreciated document integrating education sector as a whole, but it neither posed nor answered the accountability question as to who was responsible for success or failure of children in education. When accountability is not fixed, it is partly parents but mostly children themselves who are blamed for failure in education. Galvanizing society or state to assume this momentous and sacred responsibility is nearly impossible; schools, tuition and test preparation service providers are in for-profit maximization; it is parents-having the highest authority because they pay for all services-must step up to assume responsibility for success or failure of their children in education.

Generally, parents play active role in choosing schools, arranging private tuitions, creating conducive physical environment at home, taking general interest in examination results, and the like. However, when it comes to getting their hands into nuts-and-bolts of education, they are reluctant because either they are busy or they consider school education difficult. Besides, many of them would rather be on friendly terms with their children than be authoritative and have a stressful environment at home. Sensing this opportunity, tuition and test preparation service providers have run a series of advertisement where parents are seen playing with their children and being proud to be their friends and partners. However, this is a flawed policy, because experienced school teachers have always advocated for parents’ involvement. Though it is counterintuitive but children do enjoy learning with their parents.

At the beginning, involvement doesn’t have to be teaching per se, but what it means is getting interested in daily routine and maintaining an academic atmosphere at home. For example, general talking about text materials and relating them with day-to-day experiences; help children complete their home tasks and projects on time; be mindful of routine examination, their syllabus, help them prepare for it; discover areas of weakness and bring help sooner etc. In fact, once responsibility is consciously assumed, countless opportunities will open up. Secondly, in almost every meeting, teachers remind parents to be conscious of their everyday behaviour because children learn by imitating adults; what better way to teach children environment lessons than being routinely practicing environment friendly actions. Culture and value system got handed over for million of years only through imitation.

Furthermore, when parents take charge by getting their feet wet, they start close monitoring of what their money is buying; instead of deification of bureaucrats, teachers, tuition, and test service providers, they start keeping everyone on their toes by demanding better services. When parents are in-charge, they can bring order and essential prioritization to otherwise disorderly education scenario spoiled by too many cooks and their bright ideas.

The crux of the argument is: When accountability is clearly articulated, human endeavor is more likely to be successful because once responsibility is assumed by anyone-even the lowest guy- it forces everyone in the chain to be accountable. In business, accountability begins at the top, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be same in education: he who pays the piper calls the tune.

 

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