Right to Education
On 12 April 2012, in its historical decision the Supreme Court (SC) of India threw its weight behind the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. The court upheld the constitutional validity of RTE Act that guarantees children free and compulsory education from the age of 6 to 14 years of age.
The judgment makes it mandatory for the government, local authorities and private schools to reserve 25 percent of their seats for ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’ of society. The decision has wiped away many apprehensions regarding the future of the Act. It has been welcomed by academicians, politicians, journalists and others. The Union minister for human resources development Mr. Kapil Sibal, articulated, “RTE can be a model for the world”. While there has been enthusiastic praise of the judgment, concerns related to quality, finance, ensuring of 25 percent reservation in private schools and change in classroom structure cannot be thrown into the winds.
The amount put aside by Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is only Rs. 25,555 crores for 2012-13, which falls short of the recommended financial requirement of Rs 1.82 lakh crore. From where will the rest of amount come?
According to Kapil Sibal (2012) more than 90 percent of households will have to enroll their wards in government schools. Thus 90 percent of households’ wards will have poor access to education; if at all they are enrolled in schools, as the quality of education in government schools is a matter of serious concern.
There is no clarity on how 25 percent reservation in private schools will be filled. There may be more than one private school in a neighborhood, so how will they decide who will go where? How will reservation in private schools be monitored?
The 25 percent reservation in private schools will dramatically change the structure of classrooms in schools. Whether diversity of classroom will create democratic learning environment and enhance teaching learning process or will it put children from ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’ in discomfited position?
Concern of Quality Education
One of the primary objectives of Right of Children Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 is improving quality education. The quality of elementary education, particularly in government schools, is a matter of serious concern. The quality of school education depends on various variables which includes physical infrastructure, method of teaching, learning environment, type of books, qualification of teachers, number of teachers, attendance of teachers and students and so on.
There has been substantial progress in increasing enrollment with national average now at 98.3 percent (2009-2010) according to official statistics. However, the attendance of pupils in class rooms has declined. In 2007, 73.4 percent students enrolled for Standards I-IV/V were present in class, which has fallen to 70.9 percent by 2011 (EPW, 2012). Fayaz Ahmad (2009) came with the findings that despite lack of staff in government schools, teachers remain absent on rotational bases. He adds that due to vacancies for teacher, absenteeism of teachers and poor infrastructure in government schools classrooms are multi-grade, i.e. one teacher attending to children from different grades in a single classroom. The attendance of teachers and students in schools is directly related with the quality of education.
Furthermore, mere enrollment of children in school does not fulfill the aims of RTE. Amman Madan (2003) argues ‘the question of reform in Indian education has usually been conceived of in narrow ways – putting children in school and getting schools to function efficiently’.
Despite high enrollments in schools 50 percent of children studying in the fifth grade lack the reading skills expected of children in the second grade (Annual Status of Education Report, ASER 2010).
Ensuring 25 percent Reservation
The RTE, Act, 2009 clause, 12 (1) (c) mandates for private schools to admit quarter of their class strength from weaker section and disadvantaged groups 1. The constitutional validity of this clause was challenged in the apex court of country. However on 12, April 2012, a bench of Chief Justice S .H. Kapadia, Justice K. S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar upheld the constitutional validity of the Act. In response to the Supreme Court order, HRD minister Kapil Sibal said, “I am very happy that the court has set all controversies at rest. One of the biggest controversies was on whether the 25 percent reservation applies to private schools or not… that controversy has been set to rest.”2
Reacting to the 25 percent reservation Krishna Kumar (2012) penned down “most ambitious among its objectives is the social engineering it proposes by guaranteeing at least 25 percent share of enrolment in unaided fee-charging schools to children whose parents cannot afford the fee.” Both Krishna Kumar and Kapil Sibal did not give indepth critical insight to the provision. The questions like, what will be the mechanism of selection process of 25 percent children from ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’. Some private schools are very reputed and provide very high quality of education and some are either at par with government schools or little ahead. There is a hierarchy of private schools which are stratified in quality education. Who will go where what will be the criteria for that? Furthermore Indian society is patriarchal in nature, boys are even served good food in comparison to girls how one can expect parents or guardians will send a girl child to these private schools, if at all they agree to send a girl child to school. The reservation benefits will go to a particular gender of society. This will further reinforce and reproduce gender bias and social inequality in society. Thus RTE itself creates a vacuum for “reproduction of culture”. Fayaz Ahmad (2009) underlines, parents prefer schooling for their girl child but prefer government schools for them in comparison to a male child.
The important finding which has been revealed by Fayaz Ahmad (2009) is the enrollment shown in schools was higher than what actually it was. This was done to get mid-day meals for more and more children so that teachers can save some money to bear other hidden expenditures and avoid wrath of authorities for poor enrollment. Despite employment of Resource Persons and Zonal Resource Persons by Jammu and Kashmir government in the department of school education ,who are obliged to ensure smooth and normal functioning of schools, such kind of loopholes are observed, how can the government ensure that private schools will follow the provision of 25 percent reservation.
Change in the Structure of Classroom and Beyond.
The RTE Act directed all schools, including privately -run schools, to reserve 25 percent of their seats for students from socially and economically backward families. That means, quarter of students in classes will be from marginalized section of the society. This will change the structure of classes.
Krishna Kumar (2012) maintains “a classroom reflecting life’s diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience.” He further adds “classroom life will now be experientially and linguistically richer. It will be easier to illustrate complex issues with examples drawn from children’s own lives.” He rightly articulates that class room will reflect diversity and will be experientially and linguistically richer. But his argument that classroom diversity will benefit children from weaker section of society is hypothetical and ambiguous.
School education can’t be separated from its social context, those who teach and learn carry with them attitudes, beliefs, habits, customs, orientations which differ from class to class. The elite schools have their own culture which suits to children of upper class. The teaching-learning environment at these schools suits children of upper class while children from weaker section may find themselves alienated from the schools. Bernstein (1971) while examining the mode of communication of working and middle class argues that both have different mode of communication and most of the teachers in schools belong to middle class which gives edge to middle class children in learning. Bourdieu(1977) empirical research in France explores that performance of a child in school on his access to cultural capital. He maintains that children of upper classes are able to understand contents of knowledge better than their counterparts belonging to marginalized sections of society.
The present experience of India with mixed or diversified classroom is not encouraging. The children from marginalized sections of society are discriminated in the classroom on the bases of gender, caste, and ethnicity. Despite Indian constitution strictly prohibits discrimination on the bases of caste and other social backgrounds and makes it a punishable act yet children from marginalized sections are discriminated in schools. How can discrimination of ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections be prevented?
There are various theoretical and empirical studies which have come up with that children from lower classes are at a backfoot in schools in the learning process. They are more vulnerable when enrolled in elite schools.
Conclusion
Indian children now have a precious right to receive free and compulsory education from the ages of 6 to 14 years of age. The government will bear all the expenditures of schooling. The act has mandated for private schools to reserve quarter of classroom strength for deprived sections of society, which will change the structure of classrooms in elite schools to school who are not yet enrolled. However, there are many apprehensions with regard to achieving desired goals through RTE. By pressing for 25 percent reservation for the ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’ of society, government has acknowledged poor quality in government schools where more than 90 percent of households in the country will have to enroll their children even if 25 percent reservation is implemented in true sense. This means that there will be further diversification of society in India. There are also concerns whether those enrolled in private schools will cope and adjust with education system and culture of elite schools. There are many other loop holes which are pressing and challenging in the way of RTE: quality education, funding, teacher skills and enhance of reservation policy are some major concerns.
Despite the flaws in the way of RTE Act, it is important to simultaneously ensure proper implementation of the Act.
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Footnotes
1. The Gazette of India, http://eoc.du.ac.in/RTE%20-%20notified.pdf
2. Dhananjay Mahapatra & Himanshi Dhawan(2012) Times of India, RTE:Govt Subsidy to be based on KV expenditure, New Delhi, 13 April.
References
Ahmad, Fayaz (2009) “ A Sociological Study of Primary Education Among Girls: With Special Reference to Block Hajin of District Bandipora” Dissertation, Barkatullah University.
Annual Status of Educational Report (2010): “Annual Status of Educational Report ( Rural) , assessed 21April 2012: http://www.pratham.org/aser08/ASER_2010_Report.pdf
Bernstein, B (1973): “Class Codes and Control: Applied Studies towards a Sociology of Language”, London, Routledge Kegan Paul.
Boourdieu,P (1977): “ Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”, In Karabel, J and A. H, Halsey, (ed), Power and Ideology in Education.OUP
Economic and Political Weekly (2012): “The Right to learn: Two Years after the Right to Education Act, the government needs to focus on quality”,16 April, Vol XLVII No 16.
Kumar, Krishna (2012): “Let a hundred children blossom: A classroom reflecting life’s diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience.”, The Hindu, Delhi,20 April 2012.
Madan, Amman (2003): Education as Vision for Social Change, Economic and Political Weekly May 31, 2003 pp.2135-2136
Sibal, Kapil (2012): “Admitting kids from weaker sections while not lowering quality of teaching will be difficult for pvt schools, but it can be done: RTE Can Be A Model For The World” The Times of India, New Delhi, 20 April.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, popularly known as the Right to Education (RTE) Act, came into being in India from April 1, 2010. The Act introduces a number of changes in education delivery through schools in India. Many of the changes are simply revolutionary, and if they are implemented properly will vastly improve the system of imparting education in the country. The Act is a landmark in the history of education related legislation in India. However, some of the provisions of the Act, although included with noble intentions, will have unintended consequences that might counter some of the advantages of the new system itself. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, as published in the Gazette of India [No. 39, Dated August 27, 2009] makes for interesting reading. I present below a critique of some of the salient provisions of the Act, and elucidate how these provisions also have unintended consequences that have not been addressed. Along the way, I also provide suggestions on what could be done better.
Category 1: Decisions relating to screening and failing students (Section 16)
No failing allowed: Section 16 of the RTE Act states that no child shall be failed in any class or expelled from school till he or she completes elementary education (defined as education imparted from Class 1 to Class 8). The Act also provides for special training for students who are deemed to be deficient and deserving of extra help. The Government reasons that failing a child is wrong, no matter the level of learning deficiency the child exhibits with respect to his or her peers. Any such deficiencies, the Government thinks, can be made up through special training provided by the school authorities under Section 4 of the Act.
The intention of this rule is no doubt to support those children who are not able to attain the level of performance required to gain admission into the next class. Through this provision, the Government wants to reinforce that performance standards are relative, that failing a child is an unjust mortification for the child’s persona, and that a child younger than 14 is too young to be explicitly classified as deficient compared to his or her peers. While all these reasons hold good, a number of issues remain unaddressed:
Skill development: While it is true that failing a child may well cause the child to intensely doubt his or her abilities, the Government fails to appreciate that failing a child also serves as a protective mechanism. Under the mechanism of failing, a child whose skills are clearly deficient with respect to his or her peers is held back in the same class and denied promotion. Failing therefore also acts as a protective mechanism, allowing a child to spend more time in the same class to make sure that he or she gains skills commensurate with his or her peers, and acts as a crucial aid in skill development. Under the new system, however, the child graduates to the next class regardless of performance or skill level in the previous one. The system then provides for special attention (through Section 4 of the Act) for such a child in the higher class to make up the deficiency in skills and ability. The critical question is – can a child who is unable to bear the workload of a junior class now deal with the workload of a senior class in addition to taking special classes? The embarrassment of failing, which under a system of failing a weak student is corrected at the first stage of inadequacy, now carries over into senior classes. This only accentuates the embarrassment that a child faces because of an increasingly steep learning curve which he or she finds ever more difficult to negotiate as compared to his or her peers. As a consequence, the child faces academic seclusion in the higher class.
No feedback mechanism: Failing also acts as an important feedback mechanism, making the child and his parents and teachers aware that the child is deficient in critical skills. It also acts as feedback for teachers – if more students fail in a teacher’s class than those in other teachers’ classes, the teacher’s methods and effectiveness should be put under the scanner. However, under the new system, when every child is promoted to the next class irrespective of performance, both parents and teachers in general put in less of a marginal effort to ensure development of the child. The onus to support the child is passed from teachers and parents to schools (through Section 4 of the Act), and rarely, if ever, will teachers be held accountable for falling standards of teaching. Similarly, the incentive for children to learn is diminished, because the fear of failure and the repercussions of non-performance are removed. No doubt all consuming interest rather than fear should be the motive for sustained academic development of children but a system that ensures less accountability for all concerned (students, parents, and teachers) in no way creates a case for substituting ‘fear’ with interest. The stick has been removed, but where is the carrot?
Postponing development does not work: One reason often put forward is that failing creates a frustration and lack of confidence in the child, causing them to drop out of school. However, a child that is deficient in skills will find it even harder to catch on in a senior class. The frustration and inclination to quit will therefore be even stronger. Ultimately, the child may be inclined to drop out of school in frustration with the system (experienced over a number of years) rather than with just a particular teacher or class. With the latter, there is still hope to bring the child back into the system. With the former, even that is gone.
Inability to deal with failure: A child who does not learn the value of accountability, performance, and hard work in the initial stages of its schooling will be ill-equipped to meet these constants of life in later stages. The child will grow up not with resilience, but with a sense of entitlement, feeling that it is the duty of teachers to provide special training when he or she does not perform. When this sense of entitlement is suddenly removed after 14 years of age, the child may well feel deprived, unsupported, and unable to deal with performance expectations. Rewarding competence is the rule in all professions and vocations – why not embed it into the child at an early age?
Category 2: Prohibition on physical punishment and ‘mental harassment’ (Section 17)
Section 17(1) of the Act prohibits physical punishment or mental harassment of students. While a ban on physical punishment is laudable, the one on mental harassment is incompletely defined. What, after all, is ‘mental harassment’? It could be anything from a light admonition for not completing homework to vile abuses meant to strip the student of all self-respect. The Act sheds no further light. The problem then becomes one of establishing the commission of mental harassment itself. When rules are incompletely defined, they are subject to manipulation and misuse.
Consider the plausible scenario when the rule on mental harassment is sought to be enacted. The clear and visible effect is that teachers will not be able to physically punish or mentally berate students. However, there are also some unseen effects.
No clear escalation mechanism: One of the unseen effects is that in rural areas and impoverished regions, where acts of mental harassment are most often carried out, these acts are not even reported (except in severe cases). This is because the child risks arousing further displeasure of the teacher concerned, and is not assured of action in any case. Section 17(2) of the Act prescribes disciplinary action against any teacher violating the rule. However, in a set up where mental harassment is hard to establish, reporting mechanisms are poor, the social matrix favours teachers, and where administrators are already feeling a crunch of available teachers, strong action against the guilty is unlikely. If at all it is to be more effective, the provision needs to be given more teeth – establish a uniform reporting and escalation mechanism for teacher misconduct and ensure that whistleblowers are not at the receiving end of punitive measures.
‘Mental harassment’ not clearly defined: In an urban, metropolitan setting, again the loose definition of mental harassment becomes a problem. Here, students are more empowered, and find it easy to report any behaviour which would constitute ‘mental harassment’ in their opinion. In such schools, errant behaviour from students is encouraged because any admonishment, even if it is meant to serve as a correction, can be (mis)interpreted as mental harassment. This will reduce the effectiveness of teachers to administer suitable admonitory measures to this class of students.
A solution for improvement, then, seems to be introduction of a uniform escalation and protection mechanism for students, along with clearly defining what mental harassment constitutes, allowing students and teachers to be aware of potential violations when they occur.
Category 3: Only ‘recognized’ schools allowed to function (Section 18)
Schools which do not have a certificate of recognition from the local authority or government shall no longer be allowed to function, under Section 18 of the Right to Education Act. If such a school is already functioning, the Act prescribes that it be shut down within 3 years if it fails to meet norms. If a new school is set up, it must conform to the norms for a school as laid out in the Schedule of the Act, or be shut down within three years. The norms themselves prescribe minimum teacher-student ratios for different classes, the existence of a permanent building, minimum number of working hours per teacher, and a functioning library, among other things. There is no doubt that a school which provides all of these will be superior in imparting education to an institution which provides only some of these. However, two main difficulties arise – it is erroneous to conclude that private, unrecognized schools offer a quality of education that is less than that offered by recognized schools, and banning private unrecognized schools further aggravates the problem of scarcity of formal education institutions.
Unrecognized schools may be better than recognized ones: In a study conducted on private, unrecognized schools in the slums of East Delhi in 2004-05[1], James Tooley and Pauline Dixon from the University of Newcastle found that there were more unrecognized schools than government schools in the locality. In this research paper, the authors found, through unannounced visits, that a higher number of teachers were teaching in private unaided schools as compared to government schools. Further, they found that private unaided schools (including unrecognized ones) had superior or similar inputs than government schools. Most significantly, in this study, Tooley and Dixon found that children in unrecognized private schools scored 72% higher in Mathematics, 83% higher in Hindi, and 246% higher in English than students in government schools. Students in private unaided schools were found to be more satisfied with facilities being provided to them than their counterparts in government schools. Teachers in these schools reported a level of satisfaction similar to that reported by teachers in government schools. Importantly, even head teachers or principals were reported to maintain closer monitoring on teachers in private unaided schools (including unrecognized schools) than in government schools. Considering that monitoring and continuous evaluation of teachers is an important element of the strategy under the new Act, this last point gains even more significance. In another study conducted by Tooley and Dixon[2] in 918 schools within a locality in Hyderabad, 37 percent were found to be private unrecognized schools, compared to only 35 percent government run schools. Around 65 percent of school-going children in the area went to the private, unrecognized schools.
It may be argued that this study was conducted only in particular areas, and that things might be different in other parts of the country. This notion is refuted by another study done by Karthik Muralidharan and Michael Kremer of rural private primary schools in India in 2003[3]. This study, as claimed by the authors, is a “nationally representative survey of rural private primary schools in India conducted in 2003”[4]. While conducting this research, the authors found that private schools are most common in areas with poor public school performance. In spite of paying lower teacher salaries, these schools have children with higher attendance rates and higher test scores. The teachers are 2 to 8 percentage points less likely to be absent as compared to public school teachers, and 6 to 9 percent more likely to be engaged in regular teaching activity.
These research studies do present strong evidence for the view that private unrecognized schools are comparable, if not superior, to their government counterparts. The onus is on the government to prove conclusively that this is not so. Until this has been done, closing down the unrecognized schools, even with a 3 year grace period to confirm to standard regulations, might be hasty, unwarranted, and a step backward.
Unrecognized schools solve the problem of outreach: Under Section 13(1), the Government has mandated that no school should collect any capitation fee for granting admission to a child. This move is welcome, and it will ensure that discretionary admissions are not the hegemony of the rich. However, having addressed the symptom, the Government has failed to address the underlying cause. Why do schools demand that capitation fees be paid for admission? The simple reason is that the number of children seeking admission is much higher than the number of seats available. The school therefore sees this as a convenient way of ensuring admission for those wards whose parents can contribute the most to the school financially. The presence of this phenomenon itself indicates the paucity of available education. The solution would be to either ensure that government schools or private recognized schools can ensure education for every child who seeks it. As this is a huge task and is not easily accomplished in at least the foreseeable future, private unrecognized schools must be a crucial part of the strategy for enabling outreach. Not only will this ensure a lesser burden on the government to set up new schools quickly, but it will also ensure that the overall vision of the Act – basic education for the widest base of children possible – is more convincingly achieved. We need to create more schools, not less. Private unrecognized schools are not the alternative to recognized institutions – they are the alternative to no education at all! By proposing to shut them down, the government decreases the outreach of education made possible by these institutions.
An uncertain future for students: The RTE Act mandates that unrecognized institutions which fail to meet the set criteria will have to close down after a period of about 3 years. However, apart from mandating that the students in these schools will have a right to seek transfer to other schools within the area, the Act does not specify how and on what basis these students will be given admission in other schools. With recognized schools already straining under the burden of having to support free education for all students who approach them (till their capacity), the room for accommodating more students will be scarce. This itself will create uncertainty for students studying in these unrecognized institutions, and will also create a strain on recognized institutions to accommodate them later. The only alternative is for the state to open as many recognized schools (of approximately similar capacity) as the number of unrecognized schools that it closes down. A Times of India report[5] cites various studies that show that in Punjab, 86% of more than 3000 private schools are unrecognized and 3.5 lakh children are enrolled in them. The report also says that in 1996, the Public Report on Basic Education in India (PROBE) survey of UP, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh found that 63% of private schools were not recognized. According to the report, Andhra Pradesh has 10,000 unrecognized schools, and Delhi has at least 1,500 catering to around 6 lakh children. The report also cites Prof Yash Aggarwal of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), who in 2000 had said that the number of unrecognized schools in the country was doubling every 5 years and the number of such schools was soon expected to be 1.5 to 2 times that of government schools in the country. With 10 years already having passed since this assertion, one can assume that unrecognized schools form a large part of the educational backbone of India. To break this apart and yet keep the neck straight will be a difficult endeavour.
Category 4: Prohibition of private tuition by teachers (Section 28)
Section 28 of the RTE Act mandates that no teacher should engage himself or herself in private tuition activity. Through this provision, the Government is trying to address the problem of teachers not teaching properly in schools and then requiring students to attend private tuitions to actually learn the subject material. The intention again is worthy of appreciation – any provision that improves standards of teaching in the classroom and removes perverse incentives for teachers to earn money from their students through unethical means is welcome.
A question of money: The primary reason why teachers underperform in the classroom and then require their students to attend private tuitions is the want of additional income, unfettered by a loose monitoring and punitive system. Banning teachers from taking private tuitions does not do away with the cause of the problem. With the RTE Act enforcing strict norms on the appointment of teachers, some aspirational educationists might well be forced to sit out. It is then possible for their collaborators inside the system to promote the seeking of private tuitions with these private teachers, with of course a money sharing arrangement being worked out between the two. While banning private tuitions by teachers themselves is a welcome step in this regard, this should also be reinforced with a ban on referring students for private tuitions. Monitoring this will not be an easy task, but then neither will be monitoring teachers to ensure they do not provide private tuitions. It is student reporting that must be the proof of misdemeanour in this case (with suitable verification and safeguards to ensure false reports are filtered out). Banning referral for private tuitions along with private tuitions by teachers themselves will make the legislation more complete.
A question of performance: Even if private tuitions by teachers are successfully done away with, it still does not address the prevalence of teacher underperformance and absenteeism. One may argue that with an alternative source of revenue (private tuitions) now removed, teachers will be loath to take up government school jobs, as the effective income earned is lower. Some capable teachers who would otherwise have taught well in school, and also taken private tuitions, will therefore walk away from a government school teacher job, choosing to dedicate themselves completely to private tuitions. On the other hand, some less capable teachers, who were not teaching well in school but were supplementing their income through private tuitions, will elect to stay on. With the failing mechanism also removed, the performance evaluation of these teachers will become even more difficult. Underperformance, therefore, will stay, and teacher absenteeism will only increase (especially to pursue other income opportunities). Section 24 of the Act prescribes punitive measures to be undertaken in case absenteeism and non-performance of duties is observed. While it prescribes the minimum duties to be undertaken by each teacher, no specification is made of what constitutes high performance. It may be argued that mere obligatory completion of assigned duties does not constitute high performance. In the light of this, monitoring performance and enforcing these measures will be difficult pending clear standards of performance.
To address the issue of attracting capable teachers, and also discourage the continuation of underperforming ones, a system of fixed-term performance based contracts and bonus payments based on group performance can be used. Test scores can and should be used as the basis for judgement of teacher performance. Teachers can initially be employed on contracts and then given permanent position and higher pay based on performance. The money so saved initially can be used for providing bonuses. Individual bonuses can be provided for higher individual performance by a teacher, as advocated in a research paper on performance based pay by Karthik Muralidharan and Venkatesh Sundararaman of Harvard University[6]. Muralidharan and Sundararaman found that students in schools practising incentive programs for teachers performed better than students in other schools by 0.28 and 0.16 standard deviations in math and language tests respectively. Similarly, absenteeism can be addressed to a certain extent by paying a group bonus based on the overall attendance of teachers in the entire school. This would create a positive culture of peer monitoring as the absence of one teacher hurts the bonus prospects of all others.
Category 5: No Board exam in the period of elementary education (Section 30)
It is surprising to note that while Board exams have long been considered the barometer for the performance of schools in the country, the RTE Act wishes to do away with them entirely in the period of elementary education. The reason behind this no doubt is that the Government feels Board exams put unnecessary pressure to perform on students at a young age. Here are two reasons why the Government should consider having Board exams, at least at the 14 year stage:
Impartial performance evaluation: While school grading systems and tests will no doubt help to evaluate student performance, Board exams serve as impartial evaluators of performance of both students as well as teachers. For an ambitious program like the RTE, evaluation through the Board examinations at the 14 year stage will help even the Government evaluate how successful the RTE program has been, and whether children have been able to imbibe a functional education. These results can in turn be used to improve the program further.
Learning to perform: ‘Exam pressure’ is a part of life. As I have said before, if children face difficulties in facing up to the board exams, then we should inculcate attitudes to make them stronger, not remove the issue itself. The system should build the ability to handle pressure, not do away with the pressure itself.
Category 6: Not ensuring that children do not drop out after age 14
While the intention of the Government (through the RTE Act) in providing free education to children till the age of 14 years is laudable, there is also a need for measures to ensure that children (especially poor children) do not drop out of school once they lose the benefit of free education. The way the Act is currently structured, life in school after 14 will seem very difficult to a child – failing, no special classes, Board exams, and school fees suddenly make going to school an unattractive proposition. The number of dropouts at age 14 might therefore increase significantly. To ensure that this does not happen, the Government should ensure that students younger than 14 are at least acquainted with the possibility of failing and the ‘daunting’ aspect of Board exams, and that some financial assistance is available for poor children who wish to study beyond the age of 14 years (for example, scholarships for children from BPL families when they complete Class 12).
Category 7: Implementation bottlenecks
The implementation of the provisions of the RTE Act will be no simple matter either. The other shortfalls aside, the availability of funds and teachers remain significant roadblocks in the implementation of the Act.
Funds shortfall: The HRD ministry has projected a requirement of Rs 35,000 crore every year. Of this, only 15,000 crore have been allocated for 2010-11. Even if the states were to contribute their fair share of funds, implementing the Act will face a shortfall of Rs 7,000 crore in its first year of implementation. The states are already asking the Centre to bear the additional fiscal burden imposed by the RTE[7]. The question of ensuring a leak-proof delivery mechanism which ensures the safe delivery of funds from source to destination also remains unanswered.
New teachers needed: According to the HRD ministry itself, more than 500,000 additional teachers will be required to meet the 30:1 teacher-student ratio advocated by the RTE. Recruiting, training, and then monitoring these teachers will be a huge task in itself.
In summary: measures to make the RTE Act even more effective
In accordance with the measures discussed above, the following measures may help to make The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act even more effective, and ensure that the Government’s vision in providing functional education for children is better met:
(a) Allow failing: Failing acts as a critical feedback mechanism for both students and teachers, and allows academic pressure to dissipate at the first stage itself, rather than accumulate and cause greater harm later. Use failing as a monitoring, feedback, and correction mechanism instead – both for students as well as for their teachers. This will also ensure lesser burden on the system and on weak students in higher classes. Also ensure that teachers do not use failing as a tool of fear by ensuring impartial evaluation and a strong formal escalation mechanism for teacher misconduct.
(b) Allow private unrecognized schools to continue: Until we can establish consistent and high standards for the delivery of education only through recognized institutions, we should allow unrecognized institutions to function. The data shows that they are at par with, if not better than, their government counterparts, and are a crucial peg in enabling the outreach of education for lakhs of children across the country.
(c) Define what constitutes mental harassment: Unless this is done, this will remain one of the clauses that are either ineffectual or are used for false reporting of minor cases as major blunders.
(d) Employ incentive based compensation systems: Research shows that these are much more effective at ensuring better teaching than improved school infrastructure. This step will also help resolve the issue of teacher underperformance in schools.
(e) Enforce strictly the ban on private tuitions and referrals: While the ban on private tuitions, as enforced by the RTE, should be strictly enforced, it should be supplemented with a ban on referring students for private tuitions too. Again, an escalation and reporting mechanism is very important to ensure that the system works. Deviations should be punished severely.
(f) Use Board exams as a feedback mechanism: Board exams should be held at the 14 year stage for every child, both to help them assess themselves and to help the state assess the effectiveness of teaching mechanisms under the RTE.
(g) Safeguard against higher dropout rates at age 14: Introduce some incentives (like scholarships) to induce poor students to continue schooling even after the mandatory RTE phase is over.
(h) Implement the program in phases, rather than all at once: The fiscal onus put on states to implement the RTE seems to be overbearing. This might result in a nominal, lopsided and ineffectual implementation of the RTE instead of a wholesome and effective one. The implementation should be rolled out in phases, with close monitoring of effectiveness at every stage. Feedback from implementation shortcomings in earlier phases can also be used to improve the system in later phases, rather than having to implement all these changes system-wide later.
(h) Ensure a safe delivery mechanism for funds: The quality of education is an intangible parameter. The Government must ensure that delivery mechanisms for funds transfer for the RTE Act have sufficient integrity or else we might see funds disappearing, ‘ghost’ students being educated, and deserving students being left out of the system, citing ‘implementation difficulties’.
The importance of Education is something on which any man can talk about endlessly. However, only a few have actually understood and acted in the way one should have to handle the Global Issue of Illiteracy, especially for the needy ones. The Government has 2 flagship programs for education: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Right to Education (RTE). Here are some of the alarming statistics (Courtesy: Times of India ).
• Mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years ( China 7.5 years) • %GDP spent on Public education is down to 3.8% in 2008-09 compared to 4.3% in 2000-01 • Only 21000cr INR have been received by RTE for 2011 out of sanctioned 48000cr. • Of 7.5 lakh candidates who appeared for CBSE’s all-India teacher recruitment test , only 93,000 passed • NGO Parham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) shows that nearly 47% Class V students cannot read Class II texts, while over 63% of Class III students cannot subtract • India has a shortage of 1.5 million teachers.
What will give a clearer picture about the need for education is to find out the literacy rate in India for those who are near to the BPL line. As per the MultiDimensional Poverty Index , 650 million people (53.7% of population) living in poverty in India, of which 340 million people (28.6% of the population) were living in severe poverty, and that a further 198 million people (16.4% of the population) were vulnerable to poverty . Now a survey of literacy rate in this section of people will reveal how successful we have been in RTE and SSA. The proportion of students in Private Schools has increased from 18.7 % to 25 %, owing to the pathetic conditions of the Governmental counterpart.
Compared to this, here are some of the statistics showing the growth stories of Institutes like Teach for India (TFI)who have taken up the initiative of free education. TFI has impacted 12000 students in 2011-2012, compared to 2800 in 2009-10. Such is the growth of these organizations. MAD (Make a Difference) also aims at improving the retention ratio of children in school. Although India has a literacy rate of 72-74 %, most of them drop out by the time they reach 10th Standard. As a result, MAD has designed courses accordingly. Currently they work in 11 districts in India with over 800 volunteers, teaching 2500 children.
So what have such organizations done correctly which our Government has not been able achieve till date? Compared to them, Government has more power, more workforce at its disposal, reach to a bigger mass of people, and adequate funds at disposal – and what its programmes yield are disheartening.
The organizations work on the simple principles of providing education to all. They are not cash rich, instead they work hard and sustain from the funds of the sponsors – Be it Corporate or Pooling of Donations. At the core, they understand what they stand for; realize the importance of the responsibility on their shoulders. TFI has fellowship programs through which they invite the Next Gen to be a part of teaching community, and bring out innovative ways of teaching.
Why can’t the Government run such programs with everything on their side? Why can’t they keep such programs free from red tape and other bureaucratic nonsense? What is required here is not some rocket science invention, but a knowledge of the basic steps of Management. There are various surveys saying that Indian students are not on par with International students, that even the state of primary education is as dismal. We have taken the initiative to teach everyone, which is obvious, but not at the cost of quality of education. Why do we wait for such surveys to tell us where we stand? Why can’t we have our own internal monitoring policy to see the effectiveness of our actions, to tell us how well we have fared and what kind of improvements are to be done? There needs to be a committee that takes care of the quality and conducts regular checks to fix the things are just not in place, in order to ensure that resources are being utilized efficiently. In today’s highly competitive world, having education for the sake of it is not is as good as not having it. Also, undue attention has to be given to the teachers and systematic and frequent monitoring of the teaching practices and their abilities in delivering the required results.
Centralized tests can be conducted throughout to see where the students stand. This will serve 2 purposes: First, it will tell the average score school wise and class wise so we can easily compare and find the loopholes. Also, the average scores of the class can tell you about the teaching efficiency of the teachers as well. SSA prepares and issues Joint Review Mission reports talking about implementation and the progress. What it does talk basically is about number of intakes, fund flows, infrastructure facilities and what it does not mention is the quality of the teachers and students. The reports have references for training for the teachers but not the results or efficiency of such training. Why so?
Whenever we discuss about the development, the rise of India as the “superpower”, we compare only the Gross Domestic Product growth, and not such basic parameters. When the basics of the country are in such appalling condition, how do you expect the country to sustain such high levels of growth? If the foundations itself are not strong enough, even minor setbacks can cause large scale damages.
Read more at http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2012/02/sarva-shiksha-abhiyan-and-right-to-education-a-critical-analysis/#Rl7GqeuJEZ7Vkt2y.99
References: Ahmad, Fayaz (2009) “ A Sociological Study of Primary Education Among Girls: With Special Reference to Block Hajin of District Bandipora” Dissertation, Barkatullah University. Kumar, Krishna (2012): “Let a hundred children blossom: A classroom reflecting life’s diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience.”, The Hindu, Delhi,20 April 2012.
The judgment makes it mandatory for the government, local authorities and private schools to reserve 25 percent of their seats for ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’ of society. The decision has wiped away many apprehensions regarding the future of the Act. It has been welcomed by academicians, politicians, journalists and others. The Union minister for human resources development Mr. Kapil Sibal, articulated, “RTE can be a model for the world”. While there has been enthusiastic praise of the judgment, concerns related to quality, finance, ensuring of 25 percent reservation in private schools and change in classroom structure cannot be thrown into the winds.
The amount put aside by Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is only Rs. 25,555 crores for 2012-13, which falls short of the recommended financial requirement of Rs 1.82 lakh crore. From where will the rest of amount come?
According to Kapil Sibal (2012) more than 90 percent of households will have to enroll their wards in government schools. Thus 90 percent of households’ wards will have poor access to education; if at all they are enrolled in schools, as the quality of education in government schools is a matter of serious concern.
There is no clarity on how 25 percent reservation in private schools will be filled. There may be more than one private school in a neighborhood, so how will they decide who will go where? How will reservation in private schools be monitored?
The 25 percent reservation in private schools will dramatically change the structure of classrooms in schools. Whether diversity of classroom will create democratic learning environment and enhance teaching learning process or will it put children from ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’ in discomfited position?
Concern of Quality Education
One of the primary objectives of Right of Children Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 is improving quality education. The quality of elementary education, particularly in government schools, is a matter of serious concern. The quality of school education depends on various variables which includes physical infrastructure, method of teaching, learning environment, type of books, qualification of teachers, number of teachers, attendance of teachers and students and so on.
There has been substantial progress in increasing enrollment with national average now at 98.3 percent (2009-2010) according to official statistics. However, the attendance of pupils in class rooms has declined. In 2007, 73.4 percent students enrolled for Standards I-IV/V were present in class, which has fallen to 70.9 percent by 2011 (EPW, 2012). Fayaz Ahmad (2009) came with the findings that despite lack of staff in government schools, teachers remain absent on rotational bases. He adds that due to vacancies for teacher, absenteeism of teachers and poor infrastructure in government schools classrooms are multi-grade, i.e. one teacher attending to children from different grades in a single classroom. The attendance of teachers and students in schools is directly related with the quality of education.
Furthermore, mere enrollment of children in school does not fulfill the aims of RTE. Amman Madan (2003) argues ‘the question of reform in Indian education has usually been conceived of in narrow ways – putting children in school and getting schools to function efficiently’.
Despite high enrollments in schools 50 percent of children studying in the fifth grade lack the reading skills expected of children in the second grade (Annual Status of Education Report, ASER 2010).
Ensuring 25 percent Reservation
The RTE, Act, 2009 clause, 12 (1) (c) mandates for private schools to admit quarter of their class strength from weaker section and disadvantaged groups 1. The constitutional validity of this clause was challenged in the apex court of country. However on 12, April 2012, a bench of Chief Justice S .H. Kapadia, Justice K. S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar upheld the constitutional validity of the Act. In response to the Supreme Court order, HRD minister Kapil Sibal said, “I am very happy that the court has set all controversies at rest. One of the biggest controversies was on whether the 25 percent reservation applies to private schools or not… that controversy has been set to rest.”2
Reacting to the 25 percent reservation Krishna Kumar (2012) penned down “most ambitious among its objectives is the social engineering it proposes by guaranteeing at least 25 percent share of enrolment in unaided fee-charging schools to children whose parents cannot afford the fee.” Both Krishna Kumar and Kapil Sibal did not give indepth critical insight to the provision. The questions like, what will be the mechanism of selection process of 25 percent children from ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’. Some private schools are very reputed and provide very high quality of education and some are either at par with government schools or little ahead. There is a hierarchy of private schools which are stratified in quality education. Who will go where what will be the criteria for that? Furthermore Indian society is patriarchal in nature, boys are even served good food in comparison to girls how one can expect parents or guardians will send a girl child to these private schools, if at all they agree to send a girl child to school. The reservation benefits will go to a particular gender of society. This will further reinforce and reproduce gender bias and social inequality in society. Thus RTE itself creates a vacuum for “reproduction of culture”. Fayaz Ahmad (2009) underlines, parents prefer schooling for their girl child but prefer government schools for them in comparison to a male child.
The important finding which has been revealed by Fayaz Ahmad (2009) is the enrollment shown in schools was higher than what actually it was. This was done to get mid-day meals for more and more children so that teachers can save some money to bear other hidden expenditures and avoid wrath of authorities for poor enrollment. Despite employment of Resource Persons and Zonal Resource Persons by Jammu and Kashmir government in the department of school education ,who are obliged to ensure smooth and normal functioning of schools, such kind of loopholes are observed, how can the government ensure that private schools will follow the provision of 25 percent reservation.
Change in the Structure of Classroom and Beyond.
The RTE Act directed all schools, including privately -run schools, to reserve 25 percent of their seats for students from socially and economically backward families. That means, quarter of students in classes will be from marginalized section of the society. This will change the structure of classes.
Krishna Kumar (2012) maintains “a classroom reflecting life’s diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience.” He further adds “classroom life will now be experientially and linguistically richer. It will be easier to illustrate complex issues with examples drawn from children’s own lives.” He rightly articulates that class room will reflect diversity and will be experientially and linguistically richer. But his argument that classroom diversity will benefit children from weaker section of society is hypothetical and ambiguous.
School education can’t be separated from its social context, those who teach and learn carry with them attitudes, beliefs, habits, customs, orientations which differ from class to class. The elite schools have their own culture which suits to children of upper class. The teaching-learning environment at these schools suits children of upper class while children from weaker section may find themselves alienated from the schools. Bernstein (1971) while examining the mode of communication of working and middle class argues that both have different mode of communication and most of the teachers in schools belong to middle class which gives edge to middle class children in learning. Bourdieu(1977) empirical research in France explores that performance of a child in school on his access to cultural capital. He maintains that children of upper classes are able to understand contents of knowledge better than their counterparts belonging to marginalized sections of society.
The present experience of India with mixed or diversified classroom is not encouraging. The children from marginalized sections of society are discriminated in the classroom on the bases of gender, caste, and ethnicity. Despite Indian constitution strictly prohibits discrimination on the bases of caste and other social backgrounds and makes it a punishable act yet children from marginalized sections are discriminated in schools. How can discrimination of ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections be prevented?
There are various theoretical and empirical studies which have come up with that children from lower classes are at a backfoot in schools in the learning process. They are more vulnerable when enrolled in elite schools.
Conclusion
Indian children now have a precious right to receive free and compulsory education from the ages of 6 to 14 years of age. The government will bear all the expenditures of schooling. The act has mandated for private schools to reserve quarter of classroom strength for deprived sections of society, which will change the structure of classrooms in elite schools to school who are not yet enrolled. However, there are many apprehensions with regard to achieving desired goals through RTE. By pressing for 25 percent reservation for the ‘weaker and disadvantaged sections’ of society, government has acknowledged poor quality in government schools where more than 90 percent of households in the country will have to enroll their children even if 25 percent reservation is implemented in true sense. This means that there will be further diversification of society in India. There are also concerns whether those enrolled in private schools will cope and adjust with education system and culture of elite schools. There are many other loop holes which are pressing and challenging in the way of RTE: quality education, funding, teacher skills and enhance of reservation policy are some major concerns.
Despite the flaws in the way of RTE Act, it is important to simultaneously ensure proper implementation of the Act.
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Footnotes
1. The Gazette of India, http://eoc.du.ac.in/RTE%20-%20notified.pdf
2. Dhananjay Mahapatra & Himanshi Dhawan(2012) Times of India, RTE:Govt Subsidy to be based on KV expenditure, New Delhi, 13 April.
References
Ahmad, Fayaz (2009) “ A Sociological Study of Primary Education Among Girls: With Special Reference to Block Hajin of District Bandipora” Dissertation, Barkatullah University.
Annual Status of Educational Report (2010): “Annual Status of Educational Report ( Rural) , assessed 21April 2012: http://www.pratham.org/aser08/ASER_2010_Report.pdf
Bernstein, B (1973): “Class Codes and Control: Applied Studies towards a Sociology of Language”, London, Routledge Kegan Paul.
Boourdieu,P (1977): “ Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”, In Karabel, J and A. H, Halsey, (ed), Power and Ideology in Education.OUP
Economic and Political Weekly (2012): “The Right to learn: Two Years after the Right to Education Act, the government needs to focus on quality”,16 April, Vol XLVII No 16.
Kumar, Krishna (2012): “Let a hundred children blossom: A classroom reflecting life’s diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience.”, The Hindu, Delhi,20 April 2012.
Madan, Amman (2003): Education as Vision for Social Change, Economic and Political Weekly May 31, 2003 pp.2135-2136
Sibal, Kapil (2012): “Admitting kids from weaker sections while not lowering quality of teaching will be difficult for pvt schools, but it can be done: RTE Can Be A Model For The World” The Times of India, New Delhi, 20 April.
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, popularly known as the Right to Education (RTE) Act, came into being in India from April 1, 2010. The Act introduces a number of changes in education delivery through schools in India. Many of the changes are simply revolutionary, and if they are implemented properly will vastly improve the system of imparting education in the country. The Act is a landmark in the history of education related legislation in India. However, some of the provisions of the Act, although included with noble intentions, will have unintended consequences that might counter some of the advantages of the new system itself. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, as published in the Gazette of India [No. 39, Dated August 27, 2009] makes for interesting reading. I present below a critique of some of the salient provisions of the Act, and elucidate how these provisions also have unintended consequences that have not been addressed. Along the way, I also provide suggestions on what could be done better.
Category 1: Decisions relating to screening and failing students (Section 16)
No failing allowed: Section 16 of the RTE Act states that no child shall be failed in any class or expelled from school till he or she completes elementary education (defined as education imparted from Class 1 to Class 8). The Act also provides for special training for students who are deemed to be deficient and deserving of extra help. The Government reasons that failing a child is wrong, no matter the level of learning deficiency the child exhibits with respect to his or her peers. Any such deficiencies, the Government thinks, can be made up through special training provided by the school authorities under Section 4 of the Act.
The intention of this rule is no doubt to support those children who are not able to attain the level of performance required to gain admission into the next class. Through this provision, the Government wants to reinforce that performance standards are relative, that failing a child is an unjust mortification for the child’s persona, and that a child younger than 14 is too young to be explicitly classified as deficient compared to his or her peers. While all these reasons hold good, a number of issues remain unaddressed:
Skill development: While it is true that failing a child may well cause the child to intensely doubt his or her abilities, the Government fails to appreciate that failing a child also serves as a protective mechanism. Under the mechanism of failing, a child whose skills are clearly deficient with respect to his or her peers is held back in the same class and denied promotion. Failing therefore also acts as a protective mechanism, allowing a child to spend more time in the same class to make sure that he or she gains skills commensurate with his or her peers, and acts as a crucial aid in skill development. Under the new system, however, the child graduates to the next class regardless of performance or skill level in the previous one. The system then provides for special attention (through Section 4 of the Act) for such a child in the higher class to make up the deficiency in skills and ability. The critical question is – can a child who is unable to bear the workload of a junior class now deal with the workload of a senior class in addition to taking special classes? The embarrassment of failing, which under a system of failing a weak student is corrected at the first stage of inadequacy, now carries over into senior classes. This only accentuates the embarrassment that a child faces because of an increasingly steep learning curve which he or she finds ever more difficult to negotiate as compared to his or her peers. As a consequence, the child faces academic seclusion in the higher class.
No feedback mechanism: Failing also acts as an important feedback mechanism, making the child and his parents and teachers aware that the child is deficient in critical skills. It also acts as feedback for teachers – if more students fail in a teacher’s class than those in other teachers’ classes, the teacher’s methods and effectiveness should be put under the scanner. However, under the new system, when every child is promoted to the next class irrespective of performance, both parents and teachers in general put in less of a marginal effort to ensure development of the child. The onus to support the child is passed from teachers and parents to schools (through Section 4 of the Act), and rarely, if ever, will teachers be held accountable for falling standards of teaching. Similarly, the incentive for children to learn is diminished, because the fear of failure and the repercussions of non-performance are removed. No doubt all consuming interest rather than fear should be the motive for sustained academic development of children but a system that ensures less accountability for all concerned (students, parents, and teachers) in no way creates a case for substituting ‘fear’ with interest. The stick has been removed, but where is the carrot?
Postponing development does not work: One reason often put forward is that failing creates a frustration and lack of confidence in the child, causing them to drop out of school. However, a child that is deficient in skills will find it even harder to catch on in a senior class. The frustration and inclination to quit will therefore be even stronger. Ultimately, the child may be inclined to drop out of school in frustration with the system (experienced over a number of years) rather than with just a particular teacher or class. With the latter, there is still hope to bring the child back into the system. With the former, even that is gone.
Inability to deal with failure: A child who does not learn the value of accountability, performance, and hard work in the initial stages of its schooling will be ill-equipped to meet these constants of life in later stages. The child will grow up not with resilience, but with a sense of entitlement, feeling that it is the duty of teachers to provide special training when he or she does not perform. When this sense of entitlement is suddenly removed after 14 years of age, the child may well feel deprived, unsupported, and unable to deal with performance expectations. Rewarding competence is the rule in all professions and vocations – why not embed it into the child at an early age?
Category 2: Prohibition on physical punishment and ‘mental harassment’ (Section 17)
Section 17(1) of the Act prohibits physical punishment or mental harassment of students. While a ban on physical punishment is laudable, the one on mental harassment is incompletely defined. What, after all, is ‘mental harassment’? It could be anything from a light admonition for not completing homework to vile abuses meant to strip the student of all self-respect. The Act sheds no further light. The problem then becomes one of establishing the commission of mental harassment itself. When rules are incompletely defined, they are subject to manipulation and misuse.
Consider the plausible scenario when the rule on mental harassment is sought to be enacted. The clear and visible effect is that teachers will not be able to physically punish or mentally berate students. However, there are also some unseen effects.
No clear escalation mechanism: One of the unseen effects is that in rural areas and impoverished regions, where acts of mental harassment are most often carried out, these acts are not even reported (except in severe cases). This is because the child risks arousing further displeasure of the teacher concerned, and is not assured of action in any case. Section 17(2) of the Act prescribes disciplinary action against any teacher violating the rule. However, in a set up where mental harassment is hard to establish, reporting mechanisms are poor, the social matrix favours teachers, and where administrators are already feeling a crunch of available teachers, strong action against the guilty is unlikely. If at all it is to be more effective, the provision needs to be given more teeth – establish a uniform reporting and escalation mechanism for teacher misconduct and ensure that whistleblowers are not at the receiving end of punitive measures.
‘Mental harassment’ not clearly defined: In an urban, metropolitan setting, again the loose definition of mental harassment becomes a problem. Here, students are more empowered, and find it easy to report any behaviour which would constitute ‘mental harassment’ in their opinion. In such schools, errant behaviour from students is encouraged because any admonishment, even if it is meant to serve as a correction, can be (mis)interpreted as mental harassment. This will reduce the effectiveness of teachers to administer suitable admonitory measures to this class of students.
A solution for improvement, then, seems to be introduction of a uniform escalation and protection mechanism for students, along with clearly defining what mental harassment constitutes, allowing students and teachers to be aware of potential violations when they occur.
Category 3: Only ‘recognized’ schools allowed to function (Section 18)
Schools which do not have a certificate of recognition from the local authority or government shall no longer be allowed to function, under Section 18 of the Right to Education Act. If such a school is already functioning, the Act prescribes that it be shut down within 3 years if it fails to meet norms. If a new school is set up, it must conform to the norms for a school as laid out in the Schedule of the Act, or be shut down within three years. The norms themselves prescribe minimum teacher-student ratios for different classes, the existence of a permanent building, minimum number of working hours per teacher, and a functioning library, among other things. There is no doubt that a school which provides all of these will be superior in imparting education to an institution which provides only some of these. However, two main difficulties arise – it is erroneous to conclude that private, unrecognized schools offer a quality of education that is less than that offered by recognized schools, and banning private unrecognized schools further aggravates the problem of scarcity of formal education institutions.
Unrecognized schools may be better than recognized ones: In a study conducted on private, unrecognized schools in the slums of East Delhi in 2004-05[1], James Tooley and Pauline Dixon from the University of Newcastle found that there were more unrecognized schools than government schools in the locality. In this research paper, the authors found, through unannounced visits, that a higher number of teachers were teaching in private unaided schools as compared to government schools. Further, they found that private unaided schools (including unrecognized ones) had superior or similar inputs than government schools. Most significantly, in this study, Tooley and Dixon found that children in unrecognized private schools scored 72% higher in Mathematics, 83% higher in Hindi, and 246% higher in English than students in government schools. Students in private unaided schools were found to be more satisfied with facilities being provided to them than their counterparts in government schools. Teachers in these schools reported a level of satisfaction similar to that reported by teachers in government schools. Importantly, even head teachers or principals were reported to maintain closer monitoring on teachers in private unaided schools (including unrecognized schools) than in government schools. Considering that monitoring and continuous evaluation of teachers is an important element of the strategy under the new Act, this last point gains even more significance. In another study conducted by Tooley and Dixon[2] in 918 schools within a locality in Hyderabad, 37 percent were found to be private unrecognized schools, compared to only 35 percent government run schools. Around 65 percent of school-going children in the area went to the private, unrecognized schools.
It may be argued that this study was conducted only in particular areas, and that things might be different in other parts of the country. This notion is refuted by another study done by Karthik Muralidharan and Michael Kremer of rural private primary schools in India in 2003[3]. This study, as claimed by the authors, is a “nationally representative survey of rural private primary schools in India conducted in 2003”[4]. While conducting this research, the authors found that private schools are most common in areas with poor public school performance. In spite of paying lower teacher salaries, these schools have children with higher attendance rates and higher test scores. The teachers are 2 to 8 percentage points less likely to be absent as compared to public school teachers, and 6 to 9 percent more likely to be engaged in regular teaching activity.
These research studies do present strong evidence for the view that private unrecognized schools are comparable, if not superior, to their government counterparts. The onus is on the government to prove conclusively that this is not so. Until this has been done, closing down the unrecognized schools, even with a 3 year grace period to confirm to standard regulations, might be hasty, unwarranted, and a step backward.
Unrecognized schools solve the problem of outreach: Under Section 13(1), the Government has mandated that no school should collect any capitation fee for granting admission to a child. This move is welcome, and it will ensure that discretionary admissions are not the hegemony of the rich. However, having addressed the symptom, the Government has failed to address the underlying cause. Why do schools demand that capitation fees be paid for admission? The simple reason is that the number of children seeking admission is much higher than the number of seats available. The school therefore sees this as a convenient way of ensuring admission for those wards whose parents can contribute the most to the school financially. The presence of this phenomenon itself indicates the paucity of available education. The solution would be to either ensure that government schools or private recognized schools can ensure education for every child who seeks it. As this is a huge task and is not easily accomplished in at least the foreseeable future, private unrecognized schools must be a crucial part of the strategy for enabling outreach. Not only will this ensure a lesser burden on the government to set up new schools quickly, but it will also ensure that the overall vision of the Act – basic education for the widest base of children possible – is more convincingly achieved. We need to create more schools, not less. Private unrecognized schools are not the alternative to recognized institutions – they are the alternative to no education at all! By proposing to shut them down, the government decreases the outreach of education made possible by these institutions.
An uncertain future for students: The RTE Act mandates that unrecognized institutions which fail to meet the set criteria will have to close down after a period of about 3 years. However, apart from mandating that the students in these schools will have a right to seek transfer to other schools within the area, the Act does not specify how and on what basis these students will be given admission in other schools. With recognized schools already straining under the burden of having to support free education for all students who approach them (till their capacity), the room for accommodating more students will be scarce. This itself will create uncertainty for students studying in these unrecognized institutions, and will also create a strain on recognized institutions to accommodate them later. The only alternative is for the state to open as many recognized schools (of approximately similar capacity) as the number of unrecognized schools that it closes down. A Times of India report[5] cites various studies that show that in Punjab, 86% of more than 3000 private schools are unrecognized and 3.5 lakh children are enrolled in them. The report also says that in 1996, the Public Report on Basic Education in India (PROBE) survey of UP, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh found that 63% of private schools were not recognized. According to the report, Andhra Pradesh has 10,000 unrecognized schools, and Delhi has at least 1,500 catering to around 6 lakh children. The report also cites Prof Yash Aggarwal of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), who in 2000 had said that the number of unrecognized schools in the country was doubling every 5 years and the number of such schools was soon expected to be 1.5 to 2 times that of government schools in the country. With 10 years already having passed since this assertion, one can assume that unrecognized schools form a large part of the educational backbone of India. To break this apart and yet keep the neck straight will be a difficult endeavour.
Category 4: Prohibition of private tuition by teachers (Section 28)
Section 28 of the RTE Act mandates that no teacher should engage himself or herself in private tuition activity. Through this provision, the Government is trying to address the problem of teachers not teaching properly in schools and then requiring students to attend private tuitions to actually learn the subject material. The intention again is worthy of appreciation – any provision that improves standards of teaching in the classroom and removes perverse incentives for teachers to earn money from their students through unethical means is welcome.
A question of money: The primary reason why teachers underperform in the classroom and then require their students to attend private tuitions is the want of additional income, unfettered by a loose monitoring and punitive system. Banning teachers from taking private tuitions does not do away with the cause of the problem. With the RTE Act enforcing strict norms on the appointment of teachers, some aspirational educationists might well be forced to sit out. It is then possible for their collaborators inside the system to promote the seeking of private tuitions with these private teachers, with of course a money sharing arrangement being worked out between the two. While banning private tuitions by teachers themselves is a welcome step in this regard, this should also be reinforced with a ban on referring students for private tuitions. Monitoring this will not be an easy task, but then neither will be monitoring teachers to ensure they do not provide private tuitions. It is student reporting that must be the proof of misdemeanour in this case (with suitable verification and safeguards to ensure false reports are filtered out). Banning referral for private tuitions along with private tuitions by teachers themselves will make the legislation more complete.
A question of performance: Even if private tuitions by teachers are successfully done away with, it still does not address the prevalence of teacher underperformance and absenteeism. One may argue that with an alternative source of revenue (private tuitions) now removed, teachers will be loath to take up government school jobs, as the effective income earned is lower. Some capable teachers who would otherwise have taught well in school, and also taken private tuitions, will therefore walk away from a government school teacher job, choosing to dedicate themselves completely to private tuitions. On the other hand, some less capable teachers, who were not teaching well in school but were supplementing their income through private tuitions, will elect to stay on. With the failing mechanism also removed, the performance evaluation of these teachers will become even more difficult. Underperformance, therefore, will stay, and teacher absenteeism will only increase (especially to pursue other income opportunities). Section 24 of the Act prescribes punitive measures to be undertaken in case absenteeism and non-performance of duties is observed. While it prescribes the minimum duties to be undertaken by each teacher, no specification is made of what constitutes high performance. It may be argued that mere obligatory completion of assigned duties does not constitute high performance. In the light of this, monitoring performance and enforcing these measures will be difficult pending clear standards of performance.
To address the issue of attracting capable teachers, and also discourage the continuation of underperforming ones, a system of fixed-term performance based contracts and bonus payments based on group performance can be used. Test scores can and should be used as the basis for judgement of teacher performance. Teachers can initially be employed on contracts and then given permanent position and higher pay based on performance. The money so saved initially can be used for providing bonuses. Individual bonuses can be provided for higher individual performance by a teacher, as advocated in a research paper on performance based pay by Karthik Muralidharan and Venkatesh Sundararaman of Harvard University[6]. Muralidharan and Sundararaman found that students in schools practising incentive programs for teachers performed better than students in other schools by 0.28 and 0.16 standard deviations in math and language tests respectively. Similarly, absenteeism can be addressed to a certain extent by paying a group bonus based on the overall attendance of teachers in the entire school. This would create a positive culture of peer monitoring as the absence of one teacher hurts the bonus prospects of all others.
Category 5: No Board exam in the period of elementary education (Section 30)
It is surprising to note that while Board exams have long been considered the barometer for the performance of schools in the country, the RTE Act wishes to do away with them entirely in the period of elementary education. The reason behind this no doubt is that the Government feels Board exams put unnecessary pressure to perform on students at a young age. Here are two reasons why the Government should consider having Board exams, at least at the 14 year stage:
Impartial performance evaluation: While school grading systems and tests will no doubt help to evaluate student performance, Board exams serve as impartial evaluators of performance of both students as well as teachers. For an ambitious program like the RTE, evaluation through the Board examinations at the 14 year stage will help even the Government evaluate how successful the RTE program has been, and whether children have been able to imbibe a functional education. These results can in turn be used to improve the program further.
Learning to perform: ‘Exam pressure’ is a part of life. As I have said before, if children face difficulties in facing up to the board exams, then we should inculcate attitudes to make them stronger, not remove the issue itself. The system should build the ability to handle pressure, not do away with the pressure itself.
Category 6: Not ensuring that children do not drop out after age 14
While the intention of the Government (through the RTE Act) in providing free education to children till the age of 14 years is laudable, there is also a need for measures to ensure that children (especially poor children) do not drop out of school once they lose the benefit of free education. The way the Act is currently structured, life in school after 14 will seem very difficult to a child – failing, no special classes, Board exams, and school fees suddenly make going to school an unattractive proposition. The number of dropouts at age 14 might therefore increase significantly. To ensure that this does not happen, the Government should ensure that students younger than 14 are at least acquainted with the possibility of failing and the ‘daunting’ aspect of Board exams, and that some financial assistance is available for poor children who wish to study beyond the age of 14 years (for example, scholarships for children from BPL families when they complete Class 12).
Category 7: Implementation bottlenecks
The implementation of the provisions of the RTE Act will be no simple matter either. The other shortfalls aside, the availability of funds and teachers remain significant roadblocks in the implementation of the Act.
Funds shortfall: The HRD ministry has projected a requirement of Rs 35,000 crore every year. Of this, only 15,000 crore have been allocated for 2010-11. Even if the states were to contribute their fair share of funds, implementing the Act will face a shortfall of Rs 7,000 crore in its first year of implementation. The states are already asking the Centre to bear the additional fiscal burden imposed by the RTE[7]. The question of ensuring a leak-proof delivery mechanism which ensures the safe delivery of funds from source to destination also remains unanswered.
New teachers needed: According to the HRD ministry itself, more than 500,000 additional teachers will be required to meet the 30:1 teacher-student ratio advocated by the RTE. Recruiting, training, and then monitoring these teachers will be a huge task in itself.
In summary: measures to make the RTE Act even more effective
In accordance with the measures discussed above, the following measures may help to make The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act even more effective, and ensure that the Government’s vision in providing functional education for children is better met:
(a) Allow failing: Failing acts as a critical feedback mechanism for both students and teachers, and allows academic pressure to dissipate at the first stage itself, rather than accumulate and cause greater harm later. Use failing as a monitoring, feedback, and correction mechanism instead – both for students as well as for their teachers. This will also ensure lesser burden on the system and on weak students in higher classes. Also ensure that teachers do not use failing as a tool of fear by ensuring impartial evaluation and a strong formal escalation mechanism for teacher misconduct.
(b) Allow private unrecognized schools to continue: Until we can establish consistent and high standards for the delivery of education only through recognized institutions, we should allow unrecognized institutions to function. The data shows that they are at par with, if not better than, their government counterparts, and are a crucial peg in enabling the outreach of education for lakhs of children across the country.
(c) Define what constitutes mental harassment: Unless this is done, this will remain one of the clauses that are either ineffectual or are used for false reporting of minor cases as major blunders.
(d) Employ incentive based compensation systems: Research shows that these are much more effective at ensuring better teaching than improved school infrastructure. This step will also help resolve the issue of teacher underperformance in schools.
(e) Enforce strictly the ban on private tuitions and referrals: While the ban on private tuitions, as enforced by the RTE, should be strictly enforced, it should be supplemented with a ban on referring students for private tuitions too. Again, an escalation and reporting mechanism is very important to ensure that the system works. Deviations should be punished severely.
(f) Use Board exams as a feedback mechanism: Board exams should be held at the 14 year stage for every child, both to help them assess themselves and to help the state assess the effectiveness of teaching mechanisms under the RTE.
(g) Safeguard against higher dropout rates at age 14: Introduce some incentives (like scholarships) to induce poor students to continue schooling even after the mandatory RTE phase is over.
(h) Implement the program in phases, rather than all at once: The fiscal onus put on states to implement the RTE seems to be overbearing. This might result in a nominal, lopsided and ineffectual implementation of the RTE instead of a wholesome and effective one. The implementation should be rolled out in phases, with close monitoring of effectiveness at every stage. Feedback from implementation shortcomings in earlier phases can also be used to improve the system in later phases, rather than having to implement all these changes system-wide later.
(h) Ensure a safe delivery mechanism for funds: The quality of education is an intangible parameter. The Government must ensure that delivery mechanisms for funds transfer for the RTE Act have sufficient integrity or else we might see funds disappearing, ‘ghost’ students being educated, and deserving students being left out of the system, citing ‘implementation difficulties’.
The importance of Education is something on which any man can talk about endlessly. However, only a few have actually understood and acted in the way one should have to handle the Global Issue of Illiteracy, especially for the needy ones. The Government has 2 flagship programs for education: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Right to Education (RTE). Here are some of the alarming statistics (Courtesy: Times of India ).
• Mean years of schooling in India is 4.4 years ( China 7.5 years) • %GDP spent on Public education is down to 3.8% in 2008-09 compared to 4.3% in 2000-01 • Only 21000cr INR have been received by RTE for 2011 out of sanctioned 48000cr. • Of 7.5 lakh candidates who appeared for CBSE’s all-India teacher recruitment test , only 93,000 passed • NGO Parham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) shows that nearly 47% Class V students cannot read Class II texts, while over 63% of Class III students cannot subtract • India has a shortage of 1.5 million teachers.
What will give a clearer picture about the need for education is to find out the literacy rate in India for those who are near to the BPL line. As per the MultiDimensional Poverty Index , 650 million people (53.7% of population) living in poverty in India, of which 340 million people (28.6% of the population) were living in severe poverty, and that a further 198 million people (16.4% of the population) were vulnerable to poverty . Now a survey of literacy rate in this section of people will reveal how successful we have been in RTE and SSA. The proportion of students in Private Schools has increased from 18.7 % to 25 %, owing to the pathetic conditions of the Governmental counterpart.
Compared to this, here are some of the statistics showing the growth stories of Institutes like Teach for India (TFI)who have taken up the initiative of free education. TFI has impacted 12000 students in 2011-2012, compared to 2800 in 2009-10. Such is the growth of these organizations. MAD (Make a Difference) also aims at improving the retention ratio of children in school. Although India has a literacy rate of 72-74 %, most of them drop out by the time they reach 10th Standard. As a result, MAD has designed courses accordingly. Currently they work in 11 districts in India with over 800 volunteers, teaching 2500 children.
So what have such organizations done correctly which our Government has not been able achieve till date? Compared to them, Government has more power, more workforce at its disposal, reach to a bigger mass of people, and adequate funds at disposal – and what its programmes yield are disheartening.
The organizations work on the simple principles of providing education to all. They are not cash rich, instead they work hard and sustain from the funds of the sponsors – Be it Corporate or Pooling of Donations. At the core, they understand what they stand for; realize the importance of the responsibility on their shoulders. TFI has fellowship programs through which they invite the Next Gen to be a part of teaching community, and bring out innovative ways of teaching.
Why can’t the Government run such programs with everything on their side? Why can’t they keep such programs free from red tape and other bureaucratic nonsense? What is required here is not some rocket science invention, but a knowledge of the basic steps of Management. There are various surveys saying that Indian students are not on par with International students, that even the state of primary education is as dismal. We have taken the initiative to teach everyone, which is obvious, but not at the cost of quality of education. Why do we wait for such surveys to tell us where we stand? Why can’t we have our own internal monitoring policy to see the effectiveness of our actions, to tell us how well we have fared and what kind of improvements are to be done? There needs to be a committee that takes care of the quality and conducts regular checks to fix the things are just not in place, in order to ensure that resources are being utilized efficiently. In today’s highly competitive world, having education for the sake of it is not is as good as not having it. Also, undue attention has to be given to the teachers and systematic and frequent monitoring of the teaching practices and their abilities in delivering the required results.
Centralized tests can be conducted throughout to see where the students stand. This will serve 2 purposes: First, it will tell the average score school wise and class wise so we can easily compare and find the loopholes. Also, the average scores of the class can tell you about the teaching efficiency of the teachers as well. SSA prepares and issues Joint Review Mission reports talking about implementation and the progress. What it does talk basically is about number of intakes, fund flows, infrastructure facilities and what it does not mention is the quality of the teachers and students. The reports have references for training for the teachers but not the results or efficiency of such training. Why so?
Whenever we discuss about the development, the rise of India as the “superpower”, we compare only the Gross Domestic Product growth, and not such basic parameters. When the basics of the country are in such appalling condition, how do you expect the country to sustain such high levels of growth? If the foundations itself are not strong enough, even minor setbacks can cause large scale damages.
Read more at http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2012/02/sarva-shiksha-abhiyan-and-right-to-education-a-critical-analysis/#Rl7GqeuJEZ7Vkt2y.99
References: Ahmad, Fayaz (2009) “ A Sociological Study of Primary Education Among Girls: With Special Reference to Block Hajin of District Bandipora” Dissertation, Barkatullah University. Kumar, Krishna (2012): “Let a hundred children blossom: A classroom reflecting life’s diversity will benefit children of all strata while enriching teaching experience.”, The Hindu, Delhi,20 April 2012.
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