A girl presents a bouquet to Anjani Kumar Singh at the round table meet in Patna on Monday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, Dec. 20: The new grading system that CBSE adopted last year is proving hard to implement, especially in a state like Bihar. This is what principal secretary (human resource development) said today at a round table meet.

The stakeholders’ meet was organised by the Delhi-based Centre for Applied Sociology and Forum for Indian Journalists on Energy, Environment, Education, Health and Agriculture on CBSE’s continuous comprehensive evaluation (CCE): “A year on where we stand.”

Speaking on the system, Singh said: “It’s good to have such a system which allows all students to prove themselves since evaluation is done in both classes IX and X, which includes skill evaluation apart from academics and behaviour. However, before implementing it with full length, CBSE should be fully prepared with it.”

Singh said: “Teachers should be trained on how exactly to evaluate the children. Parents, especially from rural areas and from weaker sections, would have to be co-operative and more participative in the activities of the child.”

The principal secretary said: “The challenges, which the new system is facing in this state, include teacher-student ratio. Though it has come up to 1:52 from 1:100, the government aims to bring it down to 1:30.”

Singh expressed his helplessness at the moment, adding that he had no better answer. He pointed out that there was a dearth of teachers in the state despite high salary. He said the technical institutions feel the brunt even more.

DAV Khagaul principal A.C. Jain said: “Good teachers are always sought after. But the children do not want to take up teaching as profession. How can we get quality teachers then?”

Jain said most of the teachers keep switching from one school to the other, so new trained teachers do not come into the system.

Singh said: “You can either wait for the existing teachers to improve or wait for a little while for trained teachers to come up.” Singh said parents no longer give teachers the right to take decisions or actions for or against the child.

Vithika Salomi, a student of Patna Women’s College, showed concern over the lack of university teachers. Singh said the government has identified 50 colleges in the state and is planning to make them centres for excellence.

MLC Sanjay Jha stressed on quality education. “Nitish Kumar is focusing on bringing in quality changes in the education sector.”

Shahi, Centre for Applied Sociology secretary, Navneet Anand, Litera Valley School principal Amrita Dutta, Neena Kumar and Manjit from Patna Central School were also present at the event.