On International Literacy Day (8th September)
comes news of the latest UNESCO Global Education Monitoring
Report calculating that India will be delayed by half a century in reaching
her educational goals. Universal primary
education (grade 5) will only be achieved by 2050, universal lower secondary
education (grade 10) by 2060, and universal upper secondary education (grade
12) by 2085. A day earlier, newspapers had
reported that the cut offs in the IIT Joint Entrance Exam in the last two years
have fallen from 35 percent in 2014 to 20 percent in 2016; clearly, even as we
struggle to provide all children with a school education, the quality of that education
is dropping by the day.
A recent World Bank discussion
paper on value for money provides even more startling figures. The most alarming of these is the disclosure
that between 2011-12 and 2014-15, the annual per pupil expenditure increased nationally
by 253 percent, while aggregate learning outcomes as measured by the National
Achievement Surveys declined between 6 and 33 percentage points! In other words, while we’ve been throwing billions
of rupees at the education problem in the hope that it will go away, it is actually
becoming worse as time goes by.
Sample this – in Kerala, average annual per pupil
expenditure increased during this period by 51.7 percent, while learning
outcomes fell by 5.3 percentage points; in Tamil Nadu, the corresponding
numbers were 77.3 percent and 6.6 percentage points. Needless to add, these are among the most
educationally advanced States in the country.
The situation in the less “advanced” States is worse – in Madhya Pradesh,
UP and Bihar, annual per pupil expenditure increased by 253, 115.4 and 90
percent respectively, while learning outcomes fell by 9.1, 11.9, and 4.4
percentage points each.[1]
Thanks to Sarva
Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya
Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, 140,000 additional government schools were
established in the last nine years, but overall enrolment in the government
sector declined by 6.7 million. On the
other hand, the private sector saw an increase in enrolment of 35.5 million during
the same period, and the opening of 170,000 new schools. Falling standards in government schools is
triggering a massive movement away from these schools; the poorest parents are
unwilling to accept the “free” education doled out here.
Post the 6th Central Pay Commission, government
teachers in India are paid 3 times as much as government teachers in China, and
up to 25 times more than the average private school teacher in India. With the implementation of the 7th
Pay Commission, this disparity looks set to increase. Purely from an efficiency standpoint, the World
Bank paper demonstrates that the cost per unit of learning achievement is Rs
338 in government schools, as compared to Rs 63 in private schools; to put it
more bluntly, private schools are five times more efficient in delivering the
same results.
Part of the reason for inefficiencies in the government
system is the need to address competing demands. Today there are 100,000 schools in the
country that have 20 pupils or less; in an earlier blog
(12th May 2015), I had argued for consolidation of small schools to
reduce inefficiency, but these are decisions that are not easy for governments.
More money is clearly not the answer to these problems, so
what is? To start with, perhaps we need
to move to a regime of less regulation, not more. Over the years, regulatory systems in
education have become rigid and inflexible, throttling many independent and
innovative ventures who have tried to make a difference. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory
Education Act of 2009 prescribed a whole host of input requirements, with no
mention of outcomes. Most of these input
requirements were mandatory for private schools, but not for government
ones. Given the picture described above,
perhaps we need to consider stipulating desired outcomes for all schools, government
or private, especially in terms of learning achievements, instead of only inputs.
A report on the proposed new National Education Policy has
been awaiting government action for a few months. As government moves to finalise it, perhaps it
would be useful to consider some of these aspects as well, so that we adopt a national
policy that enables rather than hampers those who wish to contribute to children
learning well.
[1] Since
the NAS only covers government and government-aided schools, these results exclude
results for private schools.
