Acharya Ramamurthy Committee (1990)

Acharya Ramamurthy Committee (1990)

The Government constituted a review committee under the chairmanship of

Acharya Ramamurthy in 1989 to review the progress and effectiveness of NPE

1986. That Committee submitted  its report in December 1990  with 81 main points in it. The Report of Rammurthy Committee put up in 1990 was named  “Towards an Enlightened and Humane Society”. The Committee recommended that even the private schools should be converted into common schools to remove social, economic, regional and gender disparities. It suggested that there must be some concrete programmes for SCs, Tribes, Women and educationally backward minorities. It further suggested that there should be adequate funds to improve the basic structure and quality of primary education. Primary education must be in mother tongue and the aid to schools providing education in other medium should be stopped. The recommendation of the Committee provided a base to develop a new programme of action, the revised Programme of Action, 1992.

It suggested that the responsibility for planning,  implementing and internal monitoring of all school based programmes for  women's education should be handed over to the Educational Complexes in  the Panchayati Raj framework. At the institutional level, the Head of the  institution (Primary/Middle/Higher Secondary Schools) should be made fully  responsible for micro level planning and ensuring universalisation (not just enrolment) of girls' education and their access to high school or vocational  education, according to disaggregated strategies and timeframes. It was also  recommended that all school text books, both by NCERT/SCERTs and other publishers, be reviewed to eliminate the invisibility of women and gender stereotypes, and also for the proper incorporation of a women's perspective in the teaching of all subjects. This review should also cover all the  supplementary reading material and library books being recommended for schools, particularly those supplied by Operation Blackboard. It also emphasized that decentralized and participative mode of planning and management offers an effective basis for responding to the challenge of regional disparities in education, including girls' education. Diverse strategies and disaggregated time frames, worked out locally, constitute the twin instrumentalities to achieve the goal of universalisation. The approach of the Committee in reviewing the National Policy on Education, 1986 and its implementation has been guided by the following principal concerns:-

·        Equity and social justice.

·        Decentralisation of educational management at all levels.

·        Establishment of a participative educational order.

·        Inculcation of values indispensable for creation of an enlightened and humane society.

·        Empowerment for work