Shades of Gray

What picture comes to your mind when you hear about a Government School?
If you have a kid, where would you send her – a government run school or the private school in your neighbourhood?

Before we look at what the answers look like, let us consider the school structure in India. For this discussion, let us consider three kinds of schools: state-run schools, government-aided private schools and privately managed schools.

Government-run schools are a mess: a study found that on any given day, one out of four teachers in state-run primary schools is absent, and of those present half are not teaching. And this is true for both government and government-aided private schools. If you consider this with the fact that around 85% of Indian children are in government run schools, the future seems grim.

The talk that private education is only for the upper layers of the Indian society is a myth. A survey by George Mason University indicated that even poor parents prefer private schools for their children. Why? The three main reasons that emerge again and again are:

• The private schools are English medium which is a very important factor for 96% of the parents.
• Parents perceive that the private sector provides a better quality of education.
• 75% of the parents said they would choose a private school even if a government school was available.

In a paper published by the Liberty Institute of New Delhi, James Tooley gives an interesting insight. He says that private school students, when unaided by any government funding, showed test scores in reading and math that were twice the levels of students in the government schools or in the government aided private schools. He concluded that the significant difference was in the accountability of teachers towards students. NIIT Technologies, a private company with 4,000 “learning centers,” has trained four million students and helped fuel India’s information technology revolution. And there are many state-run centres that are faring poorly. Clearly, this proves that accreditation or government recognition is not necessary to be successful or effective.

So why are government aided schools not doing as well? Almost everyone believes that no learning happens there. Poor, crumbling infrastructure and lack of competent teachers are another factor. In many villages, the government school doesn’t even have a toilet for girl students. Sometimes, students, especially in the tribal areas, have to walk several kilometers to reach their government school. No wonder the dropout rate is as high as 80% in some cases. In many government schools, there is just one headmaster who acts as the instructor for all subjects. In almost all cases, the school teachers are not paid on time; it is needless to discuss whether their salaries are attractive enough to keep them from looking for other jobs. So, what right does our bureaucrats or politicians have to complain about the mushrooming of private schools if one in each of these villages can help educate the children?

So should we dismantle all government schools? While the arguments mentioned so far may seem to indicate that this is the way to go, it will not be easy to do away with such a large system. Besides, many argue that only government schools are sensitive to social objectives such as raising the enrolment of girls, SC/ST students, and those from lower income groups. Though there are private schools that voluntarily work towards these objectives, it would be unwise for the government to wash its hands off in this area.

So what can we do? In India, state departments of education manage 66% of all primary schools, and local bodies manage only 20%, with the rest managed by tribal social welfare departments, private aided and unaided institutions. It is here where a change could work best. If education is decentralized in India with local bodies having more control, these institutions would be better suited to manage the local needs and preferences. Government can fulfill its social objectives by acting only as a watchdog with at best none or minimum interference. Even for private schools, financial incentives can be provided as a means to entice them to cater to socially and economically weaker sections of the society.

Doing all this would mean that Government gives a serious thought to the amount of money it allocates for education every year in the Union Budget. Currently, the expenditure on education is around 3% of the GDP and if new initiatives are to be successful, this figure needs to go up. In addition to the education cess already levied, the Government should consider raising the fees to government managed colleges of higher education as these centers charge fees that is much below that charged by private parties.

If these measures are taken, and the money meant for education is used to strengthen private parties and local bodies working towards education, the results would be far better than what we have achieved so far by spending on an inefficient model of public education.