source -
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/a-lesson-in-hidden-agendas/article8397088.ece
A lesson in hidden agendas
The assault on the Right to Education Act and government schools is
motivated. It is definitely not in the interest of India’s children,
especially those from less privileged households
The public education system (PES) has for long been under fire. It is
being painted as non-functioning, wasteful and un-improvable. The Right
to Education Act (RTE) was designed to improve this system. Therefore,
it is natural that the RTE will also come under fire from the same
quarters that have been attacking the PES. The PES and RTE do have
problems, and they need to be fixed; we need to find a way to make the
system deliver in terms of better learning outcomes.
However, all the attacks which arise from private schools, their
supporters and the privatisation lobby are unjustified; and the
solutions that are being aggressively pushed will lead us further into
the morass.
The original fiction
A lie is being perpetrated through sheer force of repetition that
learning is better in so-called low-cost private schools. There are some
studies that claim that private schools outperform public schools;
while others claim that after adjusting for family and socio-economic
background of the children, the difference is not statistically
significant. Amita Chudgar and Elizabeth Quin claim that they “find
insufficient evidence to claim that children in private schools
outperform those in public schools in India… better data are needed”
(“Relationship between Private Schooling and Achievement: Results from
Rural and Urban India”, Economics of Education Review, 2012). In spite
of many studies conducted more or less with the express purpose of
establishing that low-fee private schools do better, there is no
reliable evidence to support that claim. However, there is evidence that
students in private “schools are less likely to belong to low caste
groups” (Sangeeta Goyal and Priyanka Pandey, “How do Government and
Private Schools Differ”, EPW, 2012), which means that they are less
inclusive. Therefore, the repeated claims of better learning in private
schools are unfounded.
When it became difficult to empirically prove that children learn better
in private schools, the attack invented a new weapon: per unit cost of
learning outcomes. Most of the learning outcome researches almost always
fail to understand the entire purport of education in any depth and
reduce it to learning of so-called 3Rs for economic purposes. The new
claim that emerged out of misplaced confidence that all that is in
education can be quantified is that the ‘per unit cost of outcome’ is
lower in private schools. Meaning that even if the learning outcomes of
private schools are not better than the public schools, the cost of
running private schools is much lower.
This argument is completely spurious and shows very little understanding
of education. The costs quoted for private schools, one, have no
reliable source of data and, two, they discount two kinds of hidden
costs — to the family and to the nation. Often the cost of education in
private schools is equated with the fee per child. This is obviously
wrong as the cost of school uniform, books and stationery, and
transport, which all are under the monopoly of the school, are not
included. Occasionally private schools want additional money for special
occasions like festivals, picnics, excursions and projects. And they
often recommend tuition for the children. None of this is counted in
this cost calculation. However, the family bears this burden and these
items add significantly to the revenue of private schools.
Teacher status
Second, the low-cost private schools often run in grossly inadequate
infrastructure. The teachers are paid less than minimum unskilled labour
wages legislated by various State governments. This has a devastating
effect on teacher status in the society, on teacher knowledge in the
education system and schools become dens of exploitation. The children
see all this and imbibe attitudes that are self-centred,
competition-oriented, and start thinking that ethics is a hindrance in
the success of a business. Therefore, the nation pays in terms of
lowered teacher status and professional knowledge, abandoning a section
of its citizens to exploitation, and possibly unhealthy attitudes in its
future citizens.
Of course, one can argue that the PES is no better in transmitting
attitudes to the children. But PES conceptually can be better if managed
well; while the private system has it in its DNA as it has to make
profit on fees. For low-end private schools to do better on this count
is impossible even in theory. Therefore, lower comparative cost of
learning is also a bogus claim.
Associated fiction: school closure
To add to the force of two spurious argument mentioned above a new
falsehood is being spread: that the low-cost private schools are closing
due to implementation of the RTE. The RTE norms of infrastructure,
children per teacher, teacher qualifications and teacher remunerations,
all are just minimum to run a decent school. Stipulation of a room for
every class, toilets and a boundary wall for safety can hardly be called
unnecessary demands. Nor can stipulation of trained teachers and
minimum salary stipulated by the state be called unreasonable. If
schools which do not have classroom, do not have trained teachers, do
not have toilets and drinking water and do not pay even the minimum
wages to their teachers close down, why should it be blamed on the RTE?
Actually, they have no right to run. Would we justify closure of primary
health centres for inefficient functioning and allow quack doctors? If
no, why should we accept these schools? Further, the claim that private
schools are being closed down due to RTE is false. Recently the Azim
Premji Foundation conducted a study in 69 districts across seven States
and one Union Territory and found that across these districts only five
schools were closed due to non-compliance of the RTE and notices for
compliance had been served to 7,156 schools. It seems the data being
used to propagate this canard of closure are unreliable, or worse.
Pushing false remedies
The remedy suggested for the low learning levels in the PES is to
encourage the private sector. Simply put, that means provide public
money to the private profiteer either though the vouchers or by
facilitating their compliance with the RTE norms. The vouchers are seen
as the ticket to quality education as the parents can decide to take
their children to any private school they like. There is no evidence the
world over of vouchers improving learning of children. In reality it is
a demand for letting the market regulate schools. The market is not a
just god, it favours big money; and competition raising quality is a
myth. Teacher education in our country is almost entirely in the hands
of the private colleges. And we all know that it has completely ruined
teacher education and all attempts to improve it so far have failed.
The proponents of the voucher system forget that freedom of choice
requires informed decision-making. And that is possible only when the
system is fair and provides space for it. The system is not fair. Poor
parents do not have adequate information about schools, and that
information cannot be reliably and systematically provided. Their
judgment can be easily swayed by false propaganda, as is being done
right now across the country.
The strength of these canards is not their truth, but the under
performance of and resultant dissatisfaction with the system. The RTE is
not being implemented either efficiently or fairly, efforts are
half-hearted at best. Governments have diluted it and are uninterested
in making the private schools comply with it. It was constructed to
provide better schools to the poor. But they have made provisions to
spare themselves. Similar treatment is meted out to almost every
legislation in our country. The laws against dowry, domestic violence
and atrocities on Dalits are also not being implemented efficiently and
fairly. That does not constitute an argument either to repeal or to
dilute those laws. The issue of quality of education can be easily fixed
in the RTE. It was assumed that since the States are responsible for
curriculum details beyond the National Curriculum Framework, and
administration and financing of education is under their purview, they
would be better placed to make guidelines on these issues. They failed
to meet the challenge. Therefore, perhaps there is a case to introduce
some clauses on ensuring learning standards.
However, this is the fault of implementation and not of the Act. Dr.
Ambedkar made a telling comment at the time of adopting the Constitution
that “however good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad
because those who are called to work it, happen to be a bad lot.” What
applies to a Constitution applies to laws made under it. Changing the
law will not improve the bad lot that is implementing it. It requires a
proactive civil society to take them to court and get public support to
implement it properly — not to, as advised, junk it.
The tirade against the PES and RTE is a classic case of giving the dog a
bad name with intention to kill it, so that a wolf of their choice
could replace it in the name of guarding the house.
(Rohit Dhankar is Professor and Director Academic Development, Azim
Premji University, Bangalore and Academic Adviser, Digantar, Jaipur.)