Quality school education – how to make it a reality

Rama Kondapalli
National Assessment and Accreditation Council

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     Last modified: October 16, 2006
     Presentation date: 11/02/2006 2:30 PM in ST Windsor A
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
The issue of quality schooling is basic to national development. For acheiving the national goal of “Education for all”, India’s points to three main challenges: (1) Universalizing quality access (2) Raising learning outcomes (3.) Reducing the gaps in education outcomes across the states and among various groups and communities.
The paper focuses on the School quality as a function of inputs and the efficient management of these inputs in relation to desired goals. Referring to the quality of schools the paper attempts to examine the following three important issues; (i) In the context of schools can we see quality as a relative term (2) Does school effectiveness refer only to the outcome or does it also include the type of inputs and the established processes? (3) What are the parameters to measure school quality?
The paper is divided into four sections. The first section is introductory. The second deals with major challenges for providing quality access and the third critically examines the role of internal agents like the head teacher, the managements etc. and the external agents like corporate/industry, the community, the university/tertiary education sector in building quality school. The fourth part provides suggestions and conclusions.