Brief Essay on Open Schooling

In post independent India, a provision for equalizing education opportunities has been made through Article 45 of the Constitution, but to date many are unable to avail the existing educational facilities. This has been happening due to several reasons.

Many students drop-out of the formal system of education because of their financial and social circumstances. Furthermore, many students have to discontinue their students due to the lack of scholastic aptitude. Drop-outs, who are later motivated to resume their education, face the difficulty in re-entering the formal system of education.

Due to limited institutional infrastructure, the admissions in the formal system of education at secondary, senior secondary and university level are made on the basis of merit for a fixed number of seats. As a result, some of the aspirants are unable to enter into the formal system of education.

Apart from these, there are certain individuals who cannot enter into the formal fold either due to their physical handicaps or due to the financial circumstances. In geographically remote areas, the population is widely scattered. The schools in such areas are not within the reach of masses because of large distances. Thus, there are a number of handicaps faced by students.

As a result, our educational planners looked for new alternative approaches for providing across education for those who wanted to continue their education. At school level, correspondence education was first introduced in 1965, when the Conference of Board of Secondary Education at Pune, recommended correspondence education courses for the private students.

The first school was established at Bhopal in 1965. The establishment of Patrachar Vidyalaya at Delhi in 1968 followed this. The Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan (Ajmer) also started correspondence courses at school level in 1968. The Central Board of Secondary Education, Institute of Correspondence Education (Allahabad), Board of Secondary Education, Orissa and SCERT, Tamil Nadu too established such types of schools.

But the correspondence institutions too had some limiting features. They adopted the same study scheme, syllabus and examination system. As a result, the problem of access could not be tackled fully by the correspondence institutions as they suffered from rigidities.

It was felt that the Open Learning System (OLS) at the school level could meet the challenge of bringing un-schooled children and adults within the fold of education. As a result the idea of starting on OLS at the school level surfaced in 1974 in the world conference of the International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE) held in New Delhi.

In 1979, the Open School was set up as a project of the Central Board of Secondary Education, Delhi. The Open School was not an examining body at that time and its examinations were conducted by the CBSE. In November 1989, the Open School was upgraded and became the National Open School (NOS), an autonomous institution. The NOS was empowered to conduct its own examinations and it became an independent Board.

Strategies of NOS:

The mission of NOS is to provide relevant, continuing and developmental education to prioritized client groups in response to the assessed needs of the people, through an Open Learning System, at the school stage.

These are an alternative to the formal system and thus make its contributions to:

1. Universalisation of education;

2. Greater equity and justice in society; and

3. The evolution of a learning society.

Keeping in view the above objectives an endeavour was made to make the courses in consonance with the needs of potential target groups. The NOS had designed, developed and delivered high quality academic programmes as well as courses in professional areas like Computer Applications, Word Processing and Secretarial Practice.

It offers two types of courses: general educational courses and vocational/life enrichment courses. Open Vocational Education is offered at secondary and senior secondary levels. Life Enrichment and Continuing Education Courses are addressed to general public and those in various areas of work.

The general education courses offered by the NOS include:

1. Foundation Course equivalent to grade VIII serving as a bridge course for joining the Secondary level programme;

2. Secondary School Course equivalent to class X level;

3. Senior Secondary Education Course equivalent to class XII level.

In order to further widen its access, the NOS has launched the following programmes :

1. Open Basic Education programme aimed at providing continuing education to the neo-literates in the age group 14+;

2. Open Elementary Education for the benefit of the non-school going children in the school going group;

3. Rural Community Workshops are being set up for providing vocational education and training in rural areas. Under this Rural Community Workshops scheme financial support will be provided to NGOs to set up workshops for vocational courses in rural areas;

4. Open Vocational Education Programme which can be combined with academics, skill-based Certificate Courses of short and long-term duration, Special Professional Certificate/Diploma Courses, Stand-alone vocational subjects, Life Enrichment Courses with vocational approaches etc.;

5. Emerging areas, namely, Early Childhood Care and Education, Ophthalmology, Geriatrics, Pre-coaching for SC/ST etc.