Even as the monsoon session of Parliament has begun, it is unlikely that any of the five long-pending education reform initiatives — National Commission for Higher Education and Research Bill, Foreign Educational Institutions Bill, and legislation related to educational tribunals, accreditation authority and educational malpractices — will be passed in this session.
Ever since the 2G telecom spectrum allocation scandal broke at the end of last year, it has preoccupied the Lok Sabha, dominating the last two sessions. Now with the new Lokpal Bill and corruption scams likely to continue to be the main subject of wrangling in the monsoon session beginning August 1, the education Bills will continue to hang fire, delaying higher education reforms even as the historic Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, is sub judice and being vigorously challenged in the Supreme Court by several associations of private schools.
At the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU)-sponsored World Education Summit held in New Delhi between July 13-15, Union human resources development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal and secretary, department of higher education, Vibha Puri Das, both of whom delivered long speeches, side-stepped the issue of passage of 13 Bills of the ministry awaiting enactment by Parliament, and reiterated the Congress-led UPA-II government’s commitment to reforms in education. “Dismantle structures that stall reforms. We should stop working in silos. Reforms should be a national goal,” intoned Sibal. Puri parroted the minister’s generalities.
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Meanwhile, even as the HRD ministry’s legislative initiatives are stalled in the increasingly fractious Lok Sabha, Sibal continues to dither on the issue of permitting a greater private sector role in education provision. On July 3, the HRD ministry rejected a Planning Commission proposal (in a draft note of the 12th Plan approach paper) advocating “for-profit” vocational and professional higher education institutions, albeit with safeguards for quality and equity.
A proposal voiced by the UPA-I government in 2007 to promote 2,500 secondary schools under the public-private partnership (PPP) model has been pending for more than four years. Although the minister and ministry officials pay lip service to PPP initiatives, the conditions imposed by the ministry are so one-sided and opposed to “profit-making” even for reinvestment in institutional growth and expansion, that there are hardly any takers for its PPP offers. However, during his speech at the disappointing World Education Summit last month, Sibal reiterated that government alone can’t build the huge capacity required for expansion in higher education, and that the private sector has a role to play.
The broad consensus of opinion among the 500-plus educationists, education bureaucrats and academics who attended the grandiosely titled World Education Summit was that unless government spending on education — estimated at 3.5 percent of GDP (Rs.400,000 crore, Centre plus states) — is sharply increased and augmented by private sector spending — especially in higher education — stagnation and obsolescence which characterise higher education in contemporary India will persist.
“Though the education outlay of the Union government increased by 0.4 percent in the Union Budget 2011-12, the outlay of the states declined by 0.9 percent. The transition percentage from secondary school into higher education is abysmal at 30 percent,” says R.P. Agarwal, former secretary of the Union HRD ministry. “Therefore our GER (gross enrolment ratio) in higher education in stagnating.” According to Agarwal, a mere 3 percent of the national research output of India is contributed by academia against more than 25 percent in OECD countries.
“Our knowledge sector isn’t growing any more. For instance, none of the 3,500 engineering colleges contributed anything at all to the development of Tata Motors’ Rs.1 lakh Nano motor car. Vital knowledge linked to national growth is missing from our education institutions,” laments Prof. Dinesh Singh, vice chancellor of Delhi University.
Hardly surprising given that the HRD ministry’s reformist bluster is in inverse proportion to its action.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Cosmetic populism
Very belatedly, early childhood care and education (ECCE) has emerged as a significant equity issue in Indian education. Following a recommendation made by the National Advisory Council (NAC), chaired by Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, to bring preschool education within the purview of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE Act), 2009 to “ensure continuity in the child’s education”, the Union ministry of human resources development has constituted a working group to suggest ways and means to make it happen. A similar proposal made by the Planning Commission to the HRD ministry in 2006 was rejected.
Unlike provision of elementary education to children aged six-14 years, which was legislated into a fundamental right by the 86th Constitutional Amendment and enacted into the RTE Act, ECCE is a ‘directive principle’ (Article 45) of the Indian Constitution and requires the State to “endeavour to provide ECCE for all children until the age of six years”. But the directive principles are not legally binding upon government.
Currently, responsibility for providing ECCE to children aged three-six is of the Union ministry of women and child development which runs the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), with the Union ministries of health and family welfare, HRD and social justice bearing sectoral responsibilities for delivery of nutrition, health and education components. Under the current proposal, the HRD ministry is expected to shoulder the responsibility for universalisation of ECCE by downward extension of its flagship prog-ramme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to include children aged four-six years. ICDS will continue to provide integrated services to children under the age of four, mainly through its anganwadi programme.
The inclusion of pre-school education means 40 million additional children will come under the purview of the RTE Act, necessitating construction of 1 million classrooms, and recruitment of 2 million trained nursery teachers and support staff.
Dr. R. Govinda, vice chancellor of the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) and a member of NAC, justifies expansion of the ambit of the RTE Act to include pre-school children. “The right to education of children cannot be limited to those between six-14 years, because pre-school education deter-mines a child’s learning in primary grades. We need to create a develop-ment continuum of learning from pre-primary to primary. Also, we need greater convergence of service providers and delivery of ECCE programmes to make them more effective,” says Govinda.
Yet not a few educationists in the national capital wonder why the RTE Act which is a virtual non-starter countrywide, has been identified as the best vehicle for providing ECCE to four-six-year-olds. “More than a year has passed since the RTE Act came into effect and so far, there are no clear guidelines and deadlines about its implementation. Barely 15 states have drafted rules to implement it and that too selectively. Extending the RTE Act to ECCE without first implementing it with some degree of seriousness and sincerity, will be a cruel joke on the people of India,” says Parth Shah, president of Centre for Civil Society, Delhi.
With the HRD ministry yet to succeed in implementing the RTE Act except for dumping a minuscule number of underprivileged children into private schools, there’s an emerging consensus among educationists that it might make more sense for the Union government to evaluate and enforce the 130 early childhood programmes run by several ministries and departments rather than expect the beleaguered HRD ministry to take on an additional responsibility.
Little wonder there’s growing cynicism that expanding the ambit of the RTE Act to include another 40 million children when the Act itself is floundering in a sea of troubles is a cosmetic exercise in vote bank politics, of which the beneficiaries will be populist politicians rather than the country’s 40 million neglected and undernourished infants.
Payal Mahajan (Delhi)