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With the enactment of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act), which officially became operational on April 1, 2010, private schools can no longer function in relative isolation from the rest of the K-12 education system. They have been co-opted to provide “education of equitable quality” to poor children. Undoubtedly, the fortunes of private schools have been materially affected, for better or worse. Yet, they now have greater opportunity (admittedly not voluntarily assumed) to educate children from hitherto neglected underprivileged households, although they are likely to suffer financially and will have to contend with greater government ‘interference’ with their work.
Why did the government wish to engage private schools with public money, in its plans to shape India’s educational future? And what can be done to improve government schools? Let’s start with six basic facts about Indian school education:
• Although primary school enrolment in India is an impressive 95 percent, attendance of the enroled is only around 75 percent nationally, and as low as 44 percent in Bihar.
• Learning outcomes in primary school are pitiably poor. The Annual Status of Education Report 2010 published by the NGO Pratham, shows that only 22 percent of class IV, 36 percent of class V and 67 percent of class VIII students could divide a three-digit number by one digit.
• Nor is the situation better in secondary education. When cheating is curtailed, only a small percentage of students pass the high school class X exam. In the UP High School Board Examination, the long-term average percentage of students passing the class X exam each year is about 45 percent. In 1992, this percentage plunged to 14.7 percent when police were deployed in classrooms to prevent routine copying.
• Teachers’ own knowledge of material in prescribed textbooks is highly inadequate. In a SchoolTELLS study conducted in 160 rural primary schools of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in 2008, only 25 percent of teachers could solve a simple percentage-related maths problem from state government prescribed class V maths textbooks..
Within the government primary school system, there’s system-wide teacher truancy of 25 percent rising to 42 percent in Jharkhand.
• Permanently employed teachers in government schools are paid 15-20 times the salaries of private school teachers. In rural Uttar Pradesh, teachers’ mean pay was Rs.12,000 per month in government primary schools compared with Rs.1,000 in private primaries. However, following the recommendation of the Sixth Pay Commission, the starting salary of government primary school teachers is Rs.23,000 in 2011, an increment which is certain to have widened the gap between government and private primary pay scales.
Yet despite the relatively enviable pay scales of government schools, the perceived quality of their education is so poor, it has provoked parental dissatisfaction and frenetic growth in private schooling. Although no public official is likely to admit it, the 25 percent provision in the RTE Act (under which private schools must compulsorily admit poor neighbourhood children to the extent of class I or pre-primary intake) is tacit admission by government that private schools provide far better quality education.
But this mammoth new form of ppp (public-private partnership) is hardly consensual: private school ‘partners’ were neither consulted nor gave their assent to the partnership.
The political infeasibility of making government school teachers accountable is probably the single most important reason why the RTE Act insists on co-opting private schools to provide quality education to poor children. Its inability to tame public school teachers is why the government has chosen to use public money to ‘buy’ private education for the poor, via the 25 percent reservation provision in the Act.
This is also perhaps why the Central and state governments have resorted to the easier option of increasing inputs under the RTE Act such as maximum pupil teacher ratio, minimum classroom area and minimum teacher qualifications, without making any reference to children’s learning outcomes measured by literacy and numeracy.
Private schools’ main challenge to the RTE Act is that the 25 percent reservation in primary classes is unconstitutional interference. This is a rights-based objection. But there are potential efficiency-based objections to the RTE Act. It imposes poor policy; squanders public money on inputs not proven to be beneficial for quality; its provisions are ideologically and expediency-driven; it is not cost-effective, inasmuch as it will yield small gains for huge expenditure.
Even now it’s not too late to rectify the flaws and inconsistencies of the hurriedly enacted RTE Act, 2009. This well-intentioned legislation has failed to address the central problem of public schooling in India — making teachers and local administrations accountable for the quality of elementary education they deliver.
(Dr. Geeta Kingdon is chair of education economics and international development at the Institute of Education, University of London)