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CSAT 2018 paper

UPSC CSE CSAT 2018 · Question 19 · Reading comprehension

According to the passage, which one of the following is critical in bringing quality in education?

Directions for the following 4 (four) items: Read the following passage and answer the four items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the passage only.

Passage

It is no longer enough for us to talk about providing for universal access to education. Making available schooling facilities is an essential prerequisite, but is insufficient to ensure that all children attend school and participate in the learning process. The school may be there, but children may not attend or they may drop out after a few months. Through school and social mapping, we must address the entire gamut of social, economic, cultural and indeed linguistic and pedagogic issues, factors that prevent children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups, as also girls, from regularly attending and complementing elementary education. The focus must be on the poorest and most vulnerable since these groups are the most disempowered and at the greatest risk of violation or denial of their right to education.

The right to education goes beyond free and compulsory education to include quality education for all. Quality is an integral part of the right to education. If the education process lacks quality, children are being denied their right. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act lays down that the curriculum should provide for learning through activities, exploration and discovery. This places an obligation on us to change our perception of children as passive receivers of knowledge, and to move beyond the convention of using textbooks as the basis of examinations. The teaching-learning process must become stress-free; and a massive programme for curricular reform should be initiated to provide for a child-friendly learning system, that is more relevant and empowering. Teacher accountability systems and processes must ensure that children are learning, and that their right to learn in a child-friendly environment is not violated. Testing and assessment systems must be reexamined and redesigned to ensure that these do not force children to struggle between school and tuition centres, and bypass childhood.

CSAT 2018 · Q19

Reading comprehension Easy

According to the passage, which one of the following is critical in bringing quality in education?

Answer & explanation

Answer: (d) Inculcating learning through activities and discovery

Right after saying quality is integral to the right to education, the passage cites the Act: the curriculum should provide for 'learning through activities, exploration and discovery'. That is its route to quality.

  • ✗ (a) Children's attendance is discussed under access, not quality; teachers' attendance is not mentioned.
  • ✗ (b) Pay or incentives for teachers appear nowhere in the passage.
  • ✗ (c) Social and cultural factors come up in the first paragraph as reasons children stay away — an access issue, not the quality discussion.
  • ✓ (d) The quality paragraph says the curriculum should provide for 'learning through activities, exploration and discovery' and asks us to stop treating children as passive receivers.

Remember · Match the option to the paragraph that answers the question; here access and quality are discussed in separate paragraphs.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper II (2018, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·

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