TGED-TGEC rivalry hits education sector
Hyderabad: Is the education sector in Telangana, supposed to be helmed by the Telangana Education Commission (TEGC) and the Telangana Education Department (TEGD) with clear lines of authority, riddled with contradictions and confusion due to a subtle tug-of-war between the two units resulting indelayed decision-making at higher levels of the administration? If certain recent developments are any indication, the answer is yes.
The TGEC claims that recommending policies from early childhood education to higher education is in its domain. However, the TGED seems disinterested in the TGEC's workings and recommendations.
Speaking to The Hans India, a senior TGED official stated that the TGEC had been overstepping its mandate and attempting to intrude into departmental affairs.
For instance, the TGED officials regularly attend the Samagra Shiksha meetings convened by the Union Education Ministry. The TGED is also responsible for managing higher education, including matters related to the Board of Intermediate Education (BIE) and universities.
The TGED needs to deal with funding, policies, and laws from the state government and bodies like the University Grants Commission, Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and others. Yet, the TGEC, which is meant be a think tank, is 'conducting seminars or workshops and claiming to prepare policies based on experts' opinions without any consideration of any of these issues.'
For instance, the TGEC conducts public hearings, like gram sabhas, and asserts that it has gathered 'stakeholder views' to support its policy recommendations.
According to TGED sources, to date the TGEC has reportedly submitted seven policy recommendations to the state government. However, none of them has been acted upon. The TGEC's draft recommendation for enacting legislation on private unaided schools and junior colleges has also been shelved, as the TGEC's fee-fixing parameters would not stand legal scrutiny.
Moreover, the TGEC has criticised the state government for making inadequate budgetary allocations for education in the 2025-26 fiscal year, compared to global standards.
Also, the TGEC's proposal to earmark 25 per cent of seats for the underprivileged, as per the Right to Education Act, and its recommendations to extend mid-day meals to junior colleges are viewed as either stirring a hornet's nest or imposing further financial burdens on a state government already grappling with financial constraints.
The latest from the corridors of power suggests that taking exception to the functioning of the TGEC, officials from the TGED have skipped its meeting. Its efforts to rope in state vice-chancellors as the stakeholders to its workshops and seminars evoked a poor response, as the VCs and senior university officials could not make any sense of the activities and the functioning of TGEC.
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