Putting schooling to the test: R. Govinda
April 26, 2011: The Indian Express
Amendments to the Indian Constitution are not unusual, but a change in the Fundamental Rights section is a rare, momentous occasion. In August 2002, the basic character of the Constitution was amended to make free and compulsory education a fundamental right of every child. It took seven long years after that for the Parliament to adopt the Right to Education (RTE) legislation, and the law became operational little over a year ago.
Recently, the government of India released a report on the progress made. Clearly, consequential action has begun to gather pace in most states. However, very little is known about how the law takes tangible shape at the ground level, in schools and classrooms.
RTE is the only Central legislation in school education that continues to be controlled and supervised by the states. The Centre and various states have yet to agree on their respective roles, with sensitive federal questions at stake. Though many state governments have vouched for their commitment to RTE, they seem to be still gauging the level of their direct responsibility for implementing a Central Act. And without the full ownership and active interest of state governments, the law is unlikely to get implemented at all.
RTE expects every school to maintain a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:30. For this to happen, the country needs to appoint more than a million teachers in the next couple of years. Where do we find so many of them? Further, this shortage of qualified teachers is a problem mainly in eight states. As a human resource development ministry report identifies, these states not only have a high percentage of untrained teachers but also a low capacity for teacher preparation. Further, the Act demands that the teacher-pupil ratio be maintained by every school, implying that mere state-level and district-level averages will not suffice. Irrational deployment is a problem in almost all states, but it is not an easy issue to tackle, as transfers and postings are highly politicised in most states.
RTE expects that every school be equipped with certain minimum infrastructure. As the specifications are so basic, that should not create any issue. But there are simply too many government schools that currently fail to meet the benchmark, despite enormous investments made in recent years under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. This clause is also likely to pose a challenge to non-governmental organisations and small private schools which invariably function with subminimal facilities using scarce resources from charity or relatively small school fees. Can we afford to push them out altogether? What would happen to children attending these schools? Should the government provide supplementary resources? While many NGOs are agitated over this question, state governments appear barely concerned.
The Act envisages major de-centralisation of school management by mandating the constitution of a school management committee in every school with a significant representation of parents. In addition, the monitoring of the Act’s implementation at the local level is vested with panchayati raj bodies. This demands high levels of involvement from parents and teachers as well as the local political leadership.
But unfortunately not much has been done to develop awareness and capabilities among teachers, headmasters and school management committee members or panchayati raj representatives. As of now, most of these people are unaware of the implications of RTE to their work.
The task is staggering, with around 1.3 million schools and around 6 million teachers. There is yet no established mechanism to reach out on such a large scale within the state system. This can be done only through mass mobilisation, possibly with civil society support. It is urgent that civil society agencies as well as the government (state and Central) engage in an exercise of re-drawing their roles in the implementation of the Act.
Despite the regulatory framework, teacher preparation in the country is in total chaos. It should be recognised that all external measures for implementing the Act come unstuck if the teacher in the classroom fails to protect the interests of the children. The Act has several specifications on what should happen in the schools and the classrooms. Though notifications have been issued by many states banning corporal punishment, no detention policy, continuous and comprehensive evaluation and so on, serious attention has not been paid to ensuring the rights of the children in the school. This should include the right of every child to be treated properly without discrimination and facilitated to learn as per the curriculum. Without protecting these rights, large assurances will lead us nowhere, and teachers are the prime actors in this regard. The country must invest more in ensuring that teachers are better prepared not only in terms of pedagogy, but also the values that must be upheld .
Much has been written about the issue of 25 per cent seats for economically weaker sections in private schools. Considering that the issue concerns only around 5 per cent of the high-end private schools, this is not likely to significantly impact the implementation and the achievement of the goal of universalisation. Nevertheless, it is a crucial clause for making our schools more inclusive places. There is mounting empirical evidence on the long-term benefits of diverse classrooms .
Many scholars consider inadequate financial allocations a major constraint for the implementation of the Act. It is true that the current levels of resource allocation would not suffice to effectively achieve the RTEgoals. But the immediate challenge is not so much that of inadequate finances; it is about the effective use of the existing resources and monitoring of the implementation of the provisions of the Act. One should assume that with faster growth and increased availability of resources, finances will not be the real hurdle. Further, one should hope that with the Census figures indicating drastic reduction in the population growth rate, the demand for school places will begin to shrink faster, giving greater scope to focus on quality.
The RTE Act gives a five-year window to achieve all these components of the law, and one is already behind us. If we are to keep to the 2015 deadline for full implementation, we must see a far greater sense of urgency on the parts of both the Centre and the state governments.
The writer is vice-chancellor of the National University for Educational Planning and Administration and a member of the national advisory committee on the right to education
