Education reform, interrupted
Hala
Education reform, interrupted
After having transformed Ladakh's educational system, a grassroots
reform movement is now struggling against vendettas spearheaded by
those in the bureaucracy.
By : Justin Shilad
Ladakh has always held a unique place in India's political landscape.
Physically cut off from New Delhi by the Zanskar range, and
administered from afar by the Jammu & Kashmir state government, Ladakh
struggled for decades with the effects of unresponsive governance.
Nowhere were those effects more visible than in the territory's
government schools. Students and their parents made do with absent
teachers, inappropriate curricula and a matriculation percentage that
sat firmly in the single digits.
In 1994, villagers, local education-department officials and civil-
society organisations of Leh District came together, at the behest of
the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), to
launch a movement dubbed Operation New Hope. The goal was to overhaul
the territory's schools, and the time proved ripe for just such a
large-scale reform movement. Test scores improved, attendance went up
and local communities gained a critical feeling of involvement in
their school systems. Suddenly, however, within a period of just
months, all of these gains have become endangered.
In the decades prior to 1994, Ladakh's education system was plagued
with problems at every level. Although government schools were
scattered throughout the area, many were located in remote mountain
villages, and teachers often faced immense difficulties simply in
getting to their post. Once they did arrive, they found themselves
without accommodation and with only limited supplies. As a result,
teaching posts were frequently left unfilled for months at a time.
Even the most dedicated teachers were insufficiently trained, and
saddled with curricula and teaching materials irrelevant to local
contexts. Primary schools used the national Indian textbooks, and
students, for instance, had to learn from language and science
textbooks that used mangoes, coconuts and banyan trees as examples -
all of them alien to Ladakh's highland topography.
A more significant obstacle was the language of instruction itself.
>From the time they entered school, despite the fact that they spoke
Ladakhi at home, students were expected to learn all of their lessons
in Urdu, the J & K government in Srinagar having set the language as
the medium of instruction across the state, which included Ladakh.
When students entered ninth class, the medium of instruction switched
suddenly to English, and in two years they were being asked to master
all of their subjects in yet another foreign language in time for the
crucial 10th-class exam. In the early 1990s, burdened by so many
pressures in their young lives, less than five percent of Ladakhi
students were passing this all-important test.
Many more were not even reaching the 10th standard. While more-
affluent students were able to escape to private schools, most
Ladakhis could only afford public education. With all education-
related policy decisions being taken in Srinagar, the system was
designed to alienate Ladakhi students from their very culture in the
classroom. This fact, coupled with language frustrations, constant
abuse by unsympathetic teachers, and a frequent absence of teachers,
inevitably drove many out of school early, towards service jobs
supporting the Indian military presence or the tourist industry.
New hope for education
For decades, Ladakh's alienation from the rest of Jammu & Kashmir had
been felt beyond just its education system; by the end of the 1980s,
many Ladakhis were feeling increasingly resentful about discrimination
by the state government. Tensions finally boiled over starting around
1989, when Ladakhi organisations demanded that Ladakh be separated
from J & K and be given union territory status. To resolve the crisis,
in 1993 the state and central governments agreed that both of Ladakh's
districts, Leh and Kargil, would have their own Autonomous Hill
Councils, which would take responsibility for setting policy within
their territories. A hill council was established immediately in Leh,
although Kargil did not create its own until 2003.
Prior to this time, parents and other villagers were often either
oblivious to what was going on in the local schools, or did not feel
empowered enough to take a more active role. SECMOL, set up in 1988,
began to document these problems, and also offered academic help to
frustrated students. Nonetheless, there was little being done to
change the school system itself. Sonam Wangchuk, one of SECMOL's
founders, soon came to the realisation that more radical and
comprehensive reforms were needed, which would require the support of
concerned government officials and the general public. When the
structure of local governance changed in 1993, with the hill council's
establishment, the opportunity arose to set this vision in motion.
Indeed, the formation of the hill council provided the crucial
opportunity to reform Leh District's government schools, and council
members quickly identified the overhaul of these as a top priority.
But things were not going to change unless parents and villagers were
able to evolve a sense of real ownership and involvement in the
institutions. Sonam Wangchuk began researching existing laws
pertaining to education, and discovered provisions for a little-known
body: the village education committee (VEC).
India's National Policy on Education of 1986, modified in 1992,
stipulated that parents have a right to form village education
committees, but this was unknown to most and never put into practice,
in Ladakh at least. Under the provisions, villages are allowed to
elect representatives to a VEC, which then works in conjunction with
teachers to manage the local school and raise money for its upkeep.
Upon discovering this fact, members of SECMOL went from village to
village to educate the communities about VECs, and to encourage them
to elect members. With the formation of VECs, parents were finally
able to take an active role in managing their community's schools.
Villagers, teachers and government officials working together under
the Operation New Hope umbrella were able to address problems that had
long burdened Leh's schools. One of their most popular achievements
was changing the medium of instruction in primary schools to English.
While English was as foreign to Ladakhis as was Urdu, students would
need to know it to pass their matriculation exams, and to go on to
higher education outside Ladakh. SECMOL also worked with teachers and
the government Education Department to develop textbooks written in
clear, concise English, with stories and examples relevant to the
Ladakhi landscape and culture (see pic).
In addition to language and textbook reform, SECMOL also started large-
scale teacher training. Previously, teachers in Ladakh had received
almost no training before being posted, forcing them to rely on rote
memorisation and corporal punishment that they had experienced during
their own student years. SECMOL initiated a series of intensive 10-day
teacher-training workshops, placing an emphasis on creative, child-
centred teaching techniques. The trainings were an opportunity for
teachers and administrators to brainstorm new classroom strategies,
while also reinforcing the teachers' English-language skills.
Though many of these efforts were spearheaded by SECMOL and other
NGOs, it was the involvement of Leh's hill council and local education
officials, together with the larger public, that allowed Operation New
Hope to pick up speed. In 1995, the newly formed hill council even
announced that it was officially adopting Operation New Hope (ONH) as
its general education policy.
Because Operation New Hope was started by people from Leh, and due to
the emphasis the movement placed on local ownership in the process of
reform, most of the activities were focused on Buddhist-dominated Leh
District, rather than the adjacent Kargil District. Especially given
Kargil's rural Shia Muslim demography, the preferred approach there
was to encourage a local organisation to lead reforms in Kargil,
rather than for ONH activists to involve themselves directly. SECMOL's
involvement in Kargil thus included providing the Kargil Development
Project with teacher training and VEC training so as to start ONH-like
reforms in about 20 pilot schools chosen from among the government
schools there. (In 2005, Wangchuk received a formal letter from Haji
Asghar Ali Karbalai, the chairman of Kargil's hill council, asking for
his and SECMOL's advice on introducing reforms in Kargil's schools of
the sort that had seen success in Leh. In recent years, VECs were
started in the Chiktan Block of Kargil District, but these faced a
setback following communal disturbances in the area in 2006.)
Back in Leh, efforts over the past decade yielded results above and
beyond initial expectations. The percentage of students passing their
10th-class exam in Ladakh has shot from five to 50 percent. More and
more Ladakhi students are entering secondary schools and pursuing
higher education. There are now at least 1000 Ladakhi students
studying at colleges in Jammu alone. Perhaps more significant in the
long term, the new textbooks - written in plain English and engaging
Ladakhi culture - have led to manifold benefits for Ladakhi students'
self-esteem. Meanwhile, contempt from non-Ladakhi teachers from other
parts of Jammu & Kashmir, who would berate students who could not
master Urdu, was now a thing of the past. Following coursework became
less of an exercise in futility.
As part of its campaign to promote VECs, SECMOL has trained 3700
villagers in Ladakh in the basics of school management, budgets and
problem-solving. After Operation New Hope was adopted as official
policy in Leh District, the VECs joined together into larger education
committees, to increase and standardise oversight of the schools. With
the public thus brought into the gambit of education management,
Ladakh's schools began functioning much better.
The schools admittedly still have a long way to go. Half of the area's
students still fail the 10th-class exam, outdated and culturally
irrelevant textbooks still clutter school shelves, and many teachers
still rely on the tried (and failed) methods of memorisation and
punishment. However, the success Ladakh has seen in improving its
schools shows what can be achieved when different sections of society
join forces. Indeed, the types of reforms that took place in Ladakh
soon surfaced in educational policies in J & K and at the national
level. As part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All
Campaign), all Indian states are now encouraged to make their own
locally relevant textbooks; child-friendly teaching methods,
comprehensive teacher training and the early introduction of English
are also now state policies throughout Jammu & Kashmir.
Resentment
Despite the significant achievements, Ladakh's school-reform movement
also gained enemies. Certain teachers and officials from the local
Education Department, individuals who had been comfortable under the
old system, seem to have been angered by the changes, particularly by
the attempts to make the teacher-posting system transparent and fair.
The actions of Leh's new District Commissioner, M K Dwivedi, who took
charge in March 2006, provided some of these officials with an excuse
to act on their grudges. Dwivedi's opposition to SECMOL is seen as
part of his attack on NGOs throughout Ladakh. Even before he spoke up
against SECMOL and Wangchuk, other NGOs had received letters from him
stating that they were 'blacklisted' for alleged political activities.
Last April, SECMOL and other organisations then received letters from
Dwivedi demanding details of their spending activities. The Ladakh
Voluntary Network, an umbrella group of NGOs that includes SECMOL,
protested, saying that the NGOs had always submitted financial details
to the elected hill council, and that Dwivedi had made baseless
accusations and backed them up with the threat of police raids.
Shortly after Dwivedi's letter was issued, however, they did submit
complete reports. This, though, did not prevent the subsequent
harassment they were to face. When a local official lodged a complaint
with the hill council about the tone of the letter, Dwivedi responded
by filing police charges against them. In March 2007, Dwivedi charged
SECMOL's Sonam Wangchuk with illegally occupying land, misusing funds
and engaging in unspecified "anti-national activities".
After SECMOL released a CD refuting the charges, Dwivedi invoked
Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code. This order, normally
reserved for communal riots, prevented SECMOL from distributing any
written or recorded communication, and banned it from organising
public gatherings. Protests by villagers supporting SECMOL were also
suppressed by the police. After the order was promulgated, the Chief
Education Officer of Leh issued a circular to all education officials,
forbidding them from contact with SECMOL, and referring to the
organisation's "propaganda" against the Education Department. Thus
far, all of SECMOL's ONH activities had been undertaken with the full
partnership of the hill council and the Education Department, so it
came as a shock when the Education Department marched in lockstep with
the district commissioner in forbidding any contact with SECMOL. After
more than a decade of close collaboration, SECMOL realised that it was
up against long-fermenting political vendettas, and decided to end its
cooperation with the hill council and the Education Department.
Meanwhile, letters supporting SECMOL and protesting Dwivedi's actions
soon poured in from throughout mainland India and overseas.
Eventually, possibly due to a pressure campaign that had gone right up
to President Abdul Kalam, the J & K state government decided to
transfer Dwivedi out of Leh District. But as of mid-July, the police
case against Sonam Wangchuk remained in effect; more importantly, the
involvement of Education Department officials in the crisis had
poisoned the once fruitful relationship between SECMOL and the local
government.
The ramifications of this soured relationship, coupled with the public
criticism of SECMOL, now has the palpable possibility of destroying
Ladakh's unique and successful experiment in injecting quality into
public schools. Hope is not necessarily lost for school reform in
Ladakh, but its future is worryingly tenuous. While VECs still exist
in most villages, it is doubtful that they will remain energetic if
SECMOL's mobilising campaigns do not resume quickly. Observers
maintain that without SECMOL's leadership, the education-reform
movement has effectively ground to a halt.
Meanwhile, in villages throughout Ladakh, students continue to study
and prepare for their final exams next April. Although they still
struggle with substandard school conditions and significant language
barriers, increasing numbers are remaining in school. The question now
is whether government officials and the public will nurture this
burgeoning talent, building on the successes of the past decade, or
let it go to waste.