Goa's green education scene through the years

There have been many views about the roll-out of the NEP 2020 in Standard IX in schools this year, but one view is clearly green!

More than a dozen agriculture graduates have been appointed as ‘instructors’ under the NSQF program of the Goa Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan to bring in qualified teachers to build up skills in vegetable gardening and to learn about the different aspects of agriculture on the job.

Interestingly, a number of my students obtained gainful employment in the Directorate of Education, and not in the Directorate of Agriculture, which, ironically, manages the agriculture college.

The good news is that the Union Ministry of Education (formerly a part of MHRD) has certified that 23.8% or almost a quarter of all schools in Goa – including 142 Government High Schools (GHS), 180 private schools with Grant-in-Aid from the State government and 40 private management unaided schools – have vegetable on their premises as of 2022.

Ramesh Jagdale, an agriculture graduate who taught at Talaulikar High School, Sacorda (then Sanguem, now Dharbandora taluka) was the first person to introduce and teach it as a subject in Std IX and the new SSC batch in 1974-75.

The number has grown this year. This was a conscious and painstaking effort of many persons.

The subject had to be introduced in the school curriculum up to SSC from 1974-75, and then, extended to the Higher Secondary School (HSS) level in 1998-99 and, finally, a college of agriculture was established in 2015-16.

Ramesh Jagdale, an graduate who taught at Talaulikar High School, Sacorda (then Sanguem, now Dharbandora taluka) was the first person to introduce and teach it as a subject in Std IX and the new SSC batch in 1974-75.

A fresh curriculum was created after the Goa Board of Education was established in 1975. Vocational HSS courses in and Floriculture were introduced in 1998, and the Horticulture course survives in four HSS in Sattari and Sanguem.

There is a similar course at RCPR School of Agriculture at Savoi Verem and at Sharada HSS in Ozorim-Pernem.

FIELD DAY: Homegrown agriculture graduates get hands-on training in Goa.

Members of the Botanical Society of Goa (BSG) helped to frame the syllabus for the vocational courses in 1998 at the Goa Board of Secondary & Higher Secondary Education, Porvorim, Goa.

And in 2000, it assisted the Saraswat Education Society to establish an extension centre of the YCMOU-Nashik at for a degree program.

Two of the graduates have completed their PhD in Botany, and four are officers in the Directorate of Agriculture.

The BSG created the conditions for a favourable decision by the government to establish Goa’s first college of agriculture in Sulcorna, and now, a second one since September, 2022, at Ela Farm, Old Goa.

Over 30 years ago, cartoonist Alexyz and journalist Joel D’Souza, began the Festival of Plants and Flowers at the SFX School, in Siolim, to encourage students to do some gardening. From 1992 to now, the has supported the Green Heritage initiative of the school.

CATCH 'EM YOUNG: Mushrooms, grown by a school student, on exhibit at a recent edition of the Festival of Plants and Flowers at the SFX School, in Siolim.

This year, it completed 32 events in as many years. Students from different high schools and higher secondary schools from four or five talukas participate each year. Even adults learn and gain from this festival.

The Government of Goa is set to give natural a big boost under the Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PMKY), and skilled students will be an important human resource to achieve this mission.

(The author is the former Chairman of the GCCI Agriculture Committee, CEO of Planter's Choice Pvt Ltd, Additional Director of OFAI and Garden Superintendent of Goa University, and has edited 18 books for Goa & Konkan)