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The obsession with private schools
There should be regulation and control over the private sector whilst govt schools remain a source for employment
It has been three years since India’s right to education law came into force. Except for a provision on teacher’s qualifications, compliance on all other provisions was to have been completed in this period.
In the past month, the shutting down of 473 private schools in Punjab for not complying with the law that provides for free and compulsory education and its potential impact on 37,800 children has made news. The Delhi State Private Schools Association has said nearly 700 private schools in Delhi may similarly face closure. Are all government schools compliant with these rules? If primary schools run by the government have not complied with the law, they need to be shut down as well. Selective application of the law and its implementation is ethically unjustifiable.
The decision to shut only private schools is symptomatic of mendacity that has crept in policy debates. The emphasis of the government in regard to the education law is on infrastructure creation, pupil-teacher ratio, meeting professional requirements of teachers, continuous and comprehensive evaluation process and, more recently, the automatic promotion of all children till the end of elementary school.
These are relatively simple matters. The special concessions made to several states by the Union human resources development ministry seeking additional time to meet professional standards for teachers reflects the challenges they are facing. This is not surprising given that just over three-fourths of regular teachers possess professional qualifications and only half the contractual teachers as per the District Information System for Education.
The parliamentary standing committee on human resource development has suggested the policy of no-detention of students till the end of elementary school should be reconsidered as it may provide a disincentive for children to strive for academic excellence. Several state governments are similarly unhappy with the continuous and comprehensive evaluation process that must be implemented in all schools. This is a process that requires a certain rigour, attention to detail and consistency among teachers—all of which require significant motivation. Both these elements of the law have an impact on the quality of learning.
An analysis of the provisional results for 2010-11 suggests that nearly one-third of all children in the country at the primary school level go to private schools. The proportion of children studying in private schools is rising constantly. In 13 states in the country, more than 40% of children at the primary level are in private schools.
The educational conundrum, after the implementation of education law is best illustrated through this blogpost http://prayatna.typepad.com/education/primary_education/, which refers to an appeal made by the Tamil Nadu Primary Teachers Association to parents asking them to avail of the benefits of free education in government schools. In the same blogpost, the results of Right to Information applications being filed in each district in Tamil Nadu reveal that 73% of government primary school teachers send their own children to private schools.
The political importance of the continued employment of teachers in government schools leads to selective enforcement of the Right to Education law. Meanwhile, since private schools are increasingly the preferred choice for parents, even poor ones, the clause that 25% of children in private schools must be from economically weaker sections is the government’s guarantor of equity since its own services are failing. The true contribution of the law may well be the creation of architecture for regulation and control over the private sector whilst government schools remain a source for employment.
V.K. Madhavan has worked in the not-for-profit sector for two decades and spent 15 years living and working in deserts and hills. He’s still on the fringe asking questions and looking for answers. He writes every fortnight.
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Business NewsOpinionThe obsession with private schools
First Published:29 Apr 2013, 07:11 PM IST
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