Kapil Sibal Shifts the Onus of Education to the Government
In 2009, the ICICI Foundation looked at the public school system in India, and compared it to some of the best performing systems globally with the help of consulting firm McKinsey. It came up with four initiatives that India can take up to improve its own system: Conduct standardised assessments at national level; set up school performance management system; strengthen in-classroom support for teachers; provide more training to headmasters. There is evidence from across the world that these initiatives work. Yet, the Bill does not offer much in this direction.
The US has National Assessment of Education Progress. The UK has national assessment tests and Australia has the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy. India has ASER, which has done a lot in raising awareness about the state of primary education. But, it’s a limited survey and does not cover all schools. A national standardised assessment would be a tool for Sibal to measure the returns on his initiatives.
While the RTE stresses on teacher to student ratio, the training and the support given to teachers are as important. Dileep Ranjekar, CEO of Azim Premji Foundation, says in countries such as Brazil and Columbia the government made significant investment in teacher training and support.
Another issue is that of non-formal schools. “Once the bill comes into effect from 1st April, the government will have to provide proper primary and upper
primary schools,” says educationist Vimala Ramachandran of Educational Resource Unit. “Some states like Rajasthan had a lot of Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) centres. These will either have to be phased out or upgraded to proper schools,” she says.
The same applies to teachers as well. Over the years, various states had deployed para-teachers, also known as barefoot teachers, shiksha karmis, gurujis and vidya sahayaks. These teachers are not well-qualified like formal teachers and are paid low salaries. For instance, in Rajasthan the minimum qualification for a para teacher can be as low as Class VIII (and Class V in case of women). In Jharkhand there are 79,000 para-teachers at the primary level while Chhattisgarh has 1,42,000 para-teachers. In states like Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, para-teachers outnumber regular teachers.
State government schools already have 5 lakh teacher vacancies. When you look at the goal of a teacher-student ratio of 1:30, the shortage becomes even more severe — 11 lakh to12 lakh teachers will have to be hired in six months. Some states don’t even have teacher training facilities.
Testing Times
Some are of the opinion that Sibal’s hands are tied because of the old guard in the ministry and various committees that he inherited from his predecessor. Sibal has to contend with various lobbies within his ministry, many of whom strongly oppose private players and public-private partnership. On the other extreme are those who say that government should stay out of schools and should only fund education. “There has to be a middle path. For RTE to be successful government cannot be the only player,” says Ramachandran. “You have to be open enough to invite other players into it — corporate foundations, for-profit private sector players, not-for profit players, education trusts.” In some states, the number of private schools is increasing at a much higher rate — such as Tamil Nadu, Panjab and Haryana — there can’t be one norm for the whole country.
Whose head will roll if implementation is poor? Says Govinda, “We are trying to do several things at one time, I don’t know whether everything will be monitored because it needs a huge amount of support system that keeps track of everything — in everything from RTE, to teacher training, school education,” But monitoring is necessary. “The other important aspect is to ensure that necessary financial resources are created at the state level — including commitment to per child expenses that arise as a result of various actions to be implemented under the Act,” says Dileep Ranjekar.
The biggest challenge for Sibal will be building consensus among political leadership. “The central government doesn’t run the education system — most of it is in states with state board schools and state universities. Centre has just a small number of institutions,” says Govinda. There are already points of disagreement here — financing for instance. The state governments want all the money to come from the Centre. Sibal has just had one meeting with the education ministers of the states. Some states are in a bad fiscal situation. While states like Madhya Pradesh and Bihar have low revenues, others like Chattisgarh are better off. “He needs to have a one-to-one dialogue with each state. He has a good intention but he doesn’t want to work the intention through — to do that he needs a good group of officers working with him,” says Ramachandran.
If successful, RTE will be the high point of Sibal’s stint as HRD minister. But he needs to act fast.
(Additional Reporting by N.S. Ramnath)
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