News

  • Nation
  • World Updates
  • Courts
  • Parliament
  • Columnists
  • Opinion
  • Honours List

Monday August 10, 2009

Educating the next generation

INDIA DIARY By COOMI KAPOOR


Last week, India adopted a Bill to ensure every child received free schooling till the age of 14 – some 60 years after the Founding Fathers acknowledged the value of education.

THE more educated a nation, the more its chances of being prosperous.

Sixty years ago, acknowledging the value of education to the nation’s socio-economic development, the Founding Fathers of the republic had enjoined upon the coming generations to provide free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years.

Their dream had remained unfulfilled until last week when, at long last, Parliament adopted the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009.

The law obliges the government to respect the fundamental right of every child to free education.

The revolutionary step – Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal called it a national enterprise that would shape India’s future – might have taken nearly 60 years coming.

But despite the enabling law, its implementation might yet pose formidable problems. For, there is a lot in the law that could prove controversial.

Education being in the list of concurrent subjects allowing both the centre and the states to regulate it, the central government will be wholly dependent on the states to provide the infrastructure for free education at the elementary school level.

The centre will set the parameters and, more importantly, provide finances to ensure that every child between the age of six and 14 attends school.

Currently, more than 21 million children of school-going age are out of school. Though the enrolment in primary schools is over 80%, it is in the rural areas that parents fail to send their children to school due to extreme poverty or distant location of schools or both.

Given that some 15 million children of school-going age are engaged in manual work – in roadside eateries, as household domestics, or in brick kilns, small factories, etc – poverty is a great disincentive for not sending wage-earning children to school, even if parents are liable to be punished for so doing.

The drop-out rate at the school-level, especially in rural areas, is 50% and more.

Also, historical and socio-economic factors were behind the low priority education had received hitherto. Education came to India rather late, with the British setting up the first universities and colleges in the later half of the 19th century in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.

For long, it was the preserve of the enlightened urban elites. Upper castes with reasonable economic means educated their children during the colonial era, a fact testified by the abysmally low literacy rate of a little over 10% at the time of Independence in 1947. Today, the rate of literacy is about 65%.

The numbers of educated might have increased, but the overall quality of education has deteriorated, with the majority of colleges and universities churning out degree holders without the intellectual wherewithal for meaningful employment.

Given that the minimum educational qualification for employment in any government job is a 12th pass secondary school-leaving certificate, the present system churns out every year millions of semi-educated young men and women fit for nothing better than menial jobs.

That would explain recent reports of a number of applicants holding masters’ degrees in various disciplines of science and arts competing for porters’ jobs at railway stations.

The Bill seeks to rectify the problem of both quality and quantity. Schools will have to follow certain common standards such as a play field, toilets and drinking water facilities, library, etc, and a teacher-student ratio not exceeding 1:40.

Now, on paper the above do make immense sense but the truth is that it will be nothing short of a miracle if half of those standards can be attained even in the majority of schools in urban areas.

For, even in the national capital a large number of schools do not have playgrounds, and the teacher-student ratio far exceeds the recommended 1:40.

Another set of prescriptions in the Bill bans capitation fee in school admissions, and screening of children and their parents before admission. The Bill also outlaws corporal punishment. Of these, only the last is most likely to be implemented.

But as any parent of a school-going child in the capital would testify, one of the most harrowing experiences is when one is seeking to get one’s child admitted in a half-decent school.

Getting a child admitted to a pre-nursery school causes parents such a headache that they are known to use up a good deal of their economic and social capital to achieve the feat.

Why, every year during admission time, the Human Resource Development Minister is inundated with requests from MPs and other VIPs for securing school admissions.

The effort should be to bring up the entire school system to a fairly decent level. It is an uphill task, notwithstanding the new legislation prescribing common nationwide standards.

A more controversial provision pertains to the reservation of 25% of seats in private schools, even if it does not take a dime from the public exchequer, for children from disadvantaged groups, including differently-abled children.

The government would compensate private schools at the average cost of schooling in a neighbourhood government-run school. The two-fold objective is to socially integrate children from relatively poorer backgrounds into the higher levels as also to ensure the availability of quality education.

The provision has already elicited howls of protest. It is argued that it would traumatise both sets of students – that is, those coming through the reserved route and those admitted through the normal competitive process, because of their completely different social and economic backgrounds.

Indeed, private schools have hinted at mounting a legal challenge, pleading that the reservations would adversely impact the overall quality of education.

The government would need to step up outlay on education from the measly 3% of GDP to 6% in the next couple of years. The physical infrastructure, including school buildings, laboratories, libraries, teacher-training institutes, et al, requires a drastic overhaul.

Undoubtedly, teacher absenteeism is very high, especially in rural areas, though it must be acknowledged that teachers are poorly paid and their salaries are delayed for months, especially in rural schools.

Teaching is not considered an attractive profession, given the generally poor salaries and low social quotient.

The rickety state of India’s educational infrastructure will require far more than a mere piece of legislation.

A coordinated effort by the central and state governments, coupled with, equally importantly, a change in attitude of parents, is needed for the future generations of Indians to be equipped with meaningful education.

  • E-mail this story
  • Print this story