Business houses, private firms and politicians play with the basic education of children in India. One set of people don't perform their duty. They are government servants and politicians. The other set of people exploit this situation for their own welfare and gains. A careful analysis shows that the private education system need to keep up its promise of quality. Most of the private schools are below par but with exorbitant fees. The new HRD minister should not listen to the private lobby and commercialise the school education. The voucher model may be tried by civil society organisations which should be supported by the Government, people and corporate. Outright handing of education to money minded private firms will be diastrous for the future of the nation.
So Mr. Kapil Sibal please don't listen to Mr. Swaminathan Aiyar whose model of American system has already petered out. Instead read what A. Divya wrote and strengthen the government education system with every possible support.
Swaminathan Aiyar writes in The Times of India (14 June 2009)
Dear Kapil Sibal,
You have aroused great expectations as human resource and development minister. We are heartened by your commitment to educational reforms to improve higher education, including easier entry for foreign universities.
Yet, for truly inclusive growth we must focus on improving basic education for the poor and historically disadvantaged classes. Poor people send their kids to government schools, but hardly any teaching takes place there, and the teachers are protected from disciplinary action by powerful trade unions. No chief minister dares antagonize these unions. Richer students supplement schooling with private tuitions, but this is unaffordable by poor students, who end up functionally illiterate after years of schooling. Lakhs of crores spent on education are wasted.
School vouchers can be one way forward. Parents can get outright grants per child in the form of school vouchers, which are redeemable only for expenses in a government or private school. Vouchers will empower poor people through choice in schools, just as democracy empowers them through choice in politics. Competition with private schools will improve government schools, just as competition from private airlines and banks have improved service in government airlines and banks.
But teachers' unions hate competition or accountability, and oppose school vouchers. They also point out that the results of school vouchers in western countries have been mixed. In some states in the US, voucher students perform no better than those in government schools. In Sweden, on the other hand, voucher students fare distinctly better.
But in those countries, government teachers actually teach. This, alas, is not the case in India. And so desperate urban slum families are pulling their children out of free government schools and sending them to private schools, at great financial sacrifice. These private slum schools are hardly of high quality, yet are better than government schools having highly qualified teachers but little teaching. The very fact that slum-dwellers are sending kids to private schools in large numbers is the best evidence that private schools are better, whatever may be the experience in the US or Europe.
In Delhi, the Centre for Civil Society has started a small project offering school vouchers worth Rs 3,600 per year to 408 children. An independent evaluation shows that voucher children perform better in standardized tests than comparable children in neighbouring government schools; that parents find the teaching and infrastructure better in private voucher schools than government schools; and that over half the poor beneficiaries will be forced to send their children back to government school if the vouchers are withdrawn. This shows that vouchers are badly needed by the poor, and yield better results too.
The Delhi scheme is tiny. Some chief ministers have sought other ways to try and scale up vouchers. In Rajasthan, the former BJP government sought to persuade government teachers to start private schools, for which students would be given vouchers. Unsurprisingly, this failed to find many takers.
So, Kapil Sibal, let me propose an alternative. You should launch a pilot project, making funding available to states who are interested, and scale up after removing the inevitable glitches. The project should offer school vouchers to urban children of disadvantaged minorities — Dalits, tribals and Muslims. Only urban areas have multiple schools within walking distance of every locality, and that is a necessary condition for real choice.
Teachers' unions will oppose this idea too. But their opposition will be muted since the benefits are limited to a small, historically disadvantaged section of the population. Besides, the idea will be supported by vote-banks of Dalits, tribals and Muslims, all of whom are wooed by politicians. Chief ministers will find it worthwhile to take on trade unions only if they are compensated by support from substantial vote banks.
In the Delhi scheme, activists spread information about vouchers in areas with 12 lakh citizens, of whom 1.2 lakh applied for vouchers. The vouchers were awarded through a draw of lots to a lucky few. Although only 408 children benefited, the project enthused over a lakh households, a number high enough to qualify as a vote-bank, and so interest politicians.
Teachers will see this as the thin end of the wedge, and launch agitations. One form of compromise could be to offer vouchers at least to girls from Dalit, tribal and Muslim families. Even the most cynical unions may feel ashamed of denying benefits to the most oppressed gender among the most oppressed classes.
Kapil Sibal, your new government is committed to affirmative action for the historically disadvantaged. This can be an excellent launching pad for school vouchers. Do not waste the opportunity.
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A. Divya writes in the same newspaper on the same day thus
Two, very different, typically Indian scenarios. The first is a government-aided school aka free, run by an NGO for those on the margins of society.
The second is a private school, used by 27% of India to educate its children for a substantial fee. But their results are surprising.
The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas - autonomous, aided schools, administered by the Human Resource Development ministry - outshine every other Indian school. Their pass percentage in this year's Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class X exams was 97.8. Kendriya Vidyalayas followed with a pass percentage of 96.3%. Even Bangalore's Shanti Bhavan, a tuition-free residential school catering to Dalits under the Indian School Certificate Examinations board, made headlines when all its Class X students got a first division for the second year running. But what of public schools? They lagged behind with 92%.
So what are free or government-aided schools doing right? Sociologist Mala Kapur Shankardass says: "More than the schools, it is about the students. Those whose parents can afford expensive schools know that later on too, they can also afford the fees of higher education institutions and have the requisite contacts to get jobs. A student from a less-privileged background will set his eyes on good academic results so that he can get into a good college without paying donations. Doing well in school is the only tool they have in life." A free school student also has fewer distractions such as games and gadgets.
Dr Abraham George, founder of Shanti Bhavan, agrees that aspiration is a powerful impulse. "Our students come from extremely poor families. Their parents are sewer cleaners, quarry laborers and have other low-paying jobs. Many were bonded labourers, trapped in debt. So, from a very young age, these children realized education was their only chance to get their parents out of their living hell."
Dagmar Etkin, a former Harvard instructor who taught chemistry to Shanti Bhavan's Class X, says: "I cried when I saw their huts and the overwhelming poverty. It was difficult to expect they would do well considering where they came from. But now, I feel it's only because of where they came from, that they did so well."
Even ordinary government schools, once infamous for their poor performance, have managed a turnaround of sorts. This year, they registered an overall pass percentage of 80.1%, an improvement of 4-5% on 2008.
Public schools have their own take on this. The principal of a reputed school in Delhi said on condition of anonymity, "Government schools reinvented themselves as they were given a warning by the education ministry - perform or perish. Navodayas do well because they only admit rural, poor students who have an excellent academic record. In that sense, they have the crème de la crème. But you also know the kind of malpractices reported in some government schools during exams."
Manju Bharatram, chairperson of Sriram School, Delhi says, "Public schools are not just about academics, they also encourage extra-curricular activities." She agrees that their students have some "distractions".
But Niranjan Dass, joint commissioner of the Navodayas, doesn't buy this argument. "We too encourage our students to participate in sports and cultural activities. We outscore private schools because we have a healthier student-teacher ratio and keep their motivation levels high."
Some say that at the end of the day, it's a tussle between the rich child's sense of entitlement and the poor one's fierce hunger for success. George says, "Rich students come to school, study, show off and go home, while poor ones study, show results and go home."
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