It’s not me. It’s the CBSE saying this:
The overall pass percentage in CBSE affiliated schools across the nation was 86.7%. That’s not so bad. But this is cold comfort to the kids and their parents whose future is at the mercy of Delhi government-run schools, where the pass percentage was just 69.32%!
Because the AAP always likes to be compared to the Central Government, I should point out that pass percentage in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas was 98.63%, while Kendriya Vidyalayas had a pass percentage of 97.03%.
Too bad that kids in Delhi government schools could learn neither math nor economics from the fantastic calculations of Arvind Kejriwal on the subject of bullet trains, black money and scams. Nor could they learn geography from following education minister Manish Sisodia on his travels across Europe.
I do not revel in reporting Delhi’s educational disaster. Yes, I am a BJP supporter and I would like to see AAP exposed. But I did not want it to be in this way. Not at the cost of innocent kids. Not at the cost of our nation’s future.
Folks who follow the news closely will remember that in recent years, riding on a lucky streak of modest improvements that were probably not statistically significant, the AAP had invested significant political capital in claiming some kind of education revolution in Delhi. This is what led to puff pieces like this old one from Ravish Kumar, which were dutifully shared by AAP trolls as you can see here:
MUST WATCH N SHARE MAX
Ravish Kumar – Prime Time praises Delhi Govt’s Revolutionary work in the field of Education in Govt Schools.
A @sharadsharma1 Report
Thx @ArvindKejriwal @msisodia @AtishiMarlena pic.twitter.com/KPFNj7rSSn
— AAP Ka Mehta (@DaaruBaazMehta) 28 May 2018
One wonders what propaganda, what excuse, what conspiracy theory will now be invented by AAP, by Ravish Kumar and other apologists to explain why Delhi government schools are the worst in the country. That CBSE examination are rigged along with EVMs or how the question papers were printed at a press in Gujarat?
Perhaps AAP Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj will do a live demo on Delhi Assembly floor showing that it is possible for someone with a pen and paper to write ZERO on the answer booklet even if the answers are correct? Perhaps a sting operation on CBSE showing how marks of Delhi government school students are sent to students in BJP ruled states?
Expect the media to seize on such conspiracy theories and fan them to the fullest. But none of this will help the students in Delhi.
In a structural matter such as education, there is always a time lag before the impact of government efforts (or lack thereof) becomes visible. It has taken just three academic years for the disaster called AAP to trigger a collapse of the education system in Delhi.
As a corollary, it follows that as and when a new government (hopefully) takes power in Delhi, it could take another three years after that to dig the capital’s schools out of the hole. In between, five batches of bright eyed-young kids could see their futures ruined by AAP’s misgovernance. What a price to pay!
This brings to mind the lines, ‘Lamhon ne khata ki thi, sadiyon ne sazaa payi‘ (the mistake was made in an instant, but the punishment it brought endured for ages). When you are in the voting booth, it only takes a few seconds to press that button. But at that moment, the future of the nation is at your fingertips.
