Avinash thinks Kapil Sibal is progressive:

Kapil Sibal, the new HRD minister of India, seems to have taken a stand completely contrary to that taken by his predecessor, Mr. Arjun Singh – he seems to actually be interested in the development of the human resources in India… ;) I am impressed by the reforms Mr. Sibal seems to be proposing in this regard, as seen in one of his interviews. For starters, Mr. Sibal says that the tremendous pressure on the children as well as the parents due to the huge number of exams that the kids have to take up could be reduced – class 10 board exams can be scrapped when the students are moving to class 11 within the same institution. Overburdening the child with the pressure of board exams traumatises the entire family, which could be avoided by this proposal. The other drastic measure he seems to have introduced is the grading system, instead of marks, for classes 9 and 10, and he wants to extend this system to classes 11 and 12. This is an efficacious, utilitarian system where the child is evaluated not based on a single day of the exam, but over the year. The same system seems to work perfectly well in the US.

How are all those and other measures  relevant to improving access to education for probably more than 70% of Indian children who never reach class 10?

Adrienne looks at an NGO which provides education to children from low-income families in Ahmedabad:

At first glance, particularly for me, paraskilling looks like a panacea!

But upon further thought, I have one main concern. You all may completely rebut me, and, in fact, I hope you do.  But doesn’t this model lose sight of the bond that forms between student and teacher, especially in younger age groups?  I still remember that bond with my first and second grade teachers, Mrs. Scharf and Mrs. Stevens. And that was almost 20 years ago!  They taught me to read and to write in cursive script – but most of all, even from that young age, they made me want to always learn more.

A line from the concluding part of her post sums up the philosophy of those who advocate paraskilling, or vouchers or other private efforts in school education:

The needs are different in low-income markets.