Education – Open to all with this Open system

Like every other year when the results of the government examinations for class 10th and class 12th are released, this year too on one hand we saw students beating the past records with their incredible scores and on the other hand we also saw many children who couldn't manage to get the minimum marks required to pass the government examination. So, what's the future for these children? Will life come to a halt because of this failure?

The devastated parents think that the future of their child is bleak and give up on pursuing the child’s education. Worse is the scenario in rural India, where children do not have enough facilities for schooling. We generally blame it all on the government. But, an awareness program about NIOS by the CSIM students on 15th of May, has given us a chance to appreciate the government for this wonderful program.

National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) is an open school system, catering to a heterogeneous group of students upto pre-degree plus some vocational courses too. This is another board of education just like CBSE , ICSE and is recognized by most of the universities. NIOS is the largest open schooling system in the world for alternate education. This system has its own curriculum and the examinations are held twice in a year. A student can study at his pace and is not forced to complete a grade in one year. Unlike other boards, students can take 9 chances in 5 years to complete the course. Students also have a choice of subjects that they want to learn. NIOS focuses not just on academics, they also offer life enrichment programme to teach life skills to students.

The other reason why one should choose NIOS is, the fee is very nominal and includes the cost of books too. The books are sent through post. Also NIOS course content is written in a simple way that one can pass the examination by just self-reading. But this is not just a study through correspondence, there are some schools offering NIOS as part of mainstream schooling in Bangalore and in other parts of the country too. English, Hindi, English, Urdu, Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati and Malayalam are the various mediums of instruction at the Secondary stage, while at the Sr. secondary stage, the options are Hindi, English and Urdu.

Considering their flexible curriculum along with an affordable fee structure, one can definitely say this is best option available for the Socially and economically deprived, the differently abled, formal school dropouts (You can carry upto two 2 credits from your previous board when you join NIOS), part time workers and of course with interesting vocational courses like Plant Protection, Play Centre Management and Beauty Culture it could be useful to even hobby learners.

With 1.4 Million students certified so far, many still believe “NIOS is only for special children”. This is completely a myth. Let's do our bit to demystify the myths and wrong beliefs about this system, which has many success stories of life transformations, by spreading a word and creating awareness about NIOS.

For more information about NIOS, please visit their website - http://www.nios.ac.in/

P.S

One of the most popular TED videos by Sir Ken Robinson http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html