Brick In The Wall –ToI- 18.1.12

Emphasis on universal schooling is fine, but the discourse must now shift to quality

    Three reports in three months paint a grim picture of school education in India. First, a leading corporate published the Quality Education Survey on high-end schools in metropolitan cities, which found them lacking on quality parameters and indicted them for excessive reliance on rote learning. Second, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment ranked Indian higher secondary students only better than those from Kyrgyzstan among 74 participating countries. And third, Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2011, assessing schools in rural India, found declining attendance, over-reliance on private tuitions and declining reading and mathematical abilities of children in the six to 14 years age category.
    Taken together, the three reports make it amply clear that despite a welcome high enrolment rate – around 96.7% – at the primary and upper primary levels, the quality of school learning is simply not up to the mark. Most government schools lack basic infrastructure such as blackboards and textbooks. Teaching standards are poor, with high teacher absenteeism. It is little wonder then that only 48.2% of class V students surveyed under ASER were able to read class IIlevel texts, among other depressing statistics.
    Unless school education is rescued from this quagmire of mediocrity, all talk about developing a skilled human resource pool and realising the country’s demographic dividend will be without substance. In this regard, the Right To Education (RTE) Act, with its objective of providing free and compulsory education to all primary schoolchildren, misses the quality issue. Two years after the RTE’s introduction, government schools have continued to wallow in pathetic conditions. Meanwhile, by imposing strict parameters on private schools, the RTE has squeezed the few entrepreneurs engaged in this field, disincentivising further investment.
    There is no denying that in the quest for universal education the public sector must take the lead. Private schools can only play a supporting role, and that too needs to be incentivised. Issues of quality can only be addressed by raising the standards of public schools. This can be done by ensuring they have enough resources and introducing better pedagogy as well as oversight of teaching staff, so that pay and promotions are linked to performance. It’s an administrative rather than legislative issue. The human resources ministry as well as education departments of states can’t duck their responsibility.