Some time ago, I was asked by the
Government of NCT Delhi to chair a committee[1]
set up to review the policy and functioning of aided schools in Delhi. Our report was submitted to the government
recently. I had the good fortune of
working with Ms Ranjana Deswal, Special Director, Directorate of Education, and
Mr Hemanth Pothula of the Education Task Force as the other two members of the
committee.
The committee’s brief was to “review the current status of 211
aided schools, and to suggest measures to improve their functioning and
performance”. Over a period of nearly 10
months, we met multiple stakeholders, from school managements to heads of
school, teachers, parents, academics, civil society members, and others, to
understand firsthand what some of the major issues might be. Based on the feedback we received, we have
made a set of specific recommendations to the government, which we believe have
the potential to significantly improve the functioning of these schools. In so doing, we also referred to and relied upon
the work done by previous committees, including the Shailaja
Chandra Committee that examined the need to review the Delhi School
Education Act and Rules, 1973.
Aided schools in Delhi are a legacy of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when various groups established
schools to impart modern education along with their particular values. Beginning with the DAV and Sanathan Dharma schools, government
grants were given to various types of groups, including Arabic, Sanskrit,
Islamic, Christian, and Sikh societies who wished to provide education to as
many Indians as possible. It is worth
noting that all these groups were motivated by philanthropic considerations,
and saw it as their duty to help educate the young.
Given the history of their establishment, aided
schools in Delhi enjoyed a great deal of functional autonomy, with very little
interference by government agencies.
After enactment of the Delhi School Education Act and Rules, 1973 (DSEAR),
the functioning of these schools was regulated more closely, with various
provisions of the Act dealing with government aid and the manner of its
utilisation. Over the years, especially
after enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act,
2009, and a slew of court judgments on various aspects, these provisions have
become quite restrictive, and schools no longer enjoy the kind of autonomy they
once had.
At the same time, the state government meets 95
percent of the recurring expenses of aided schools and allocated Rs 335 crore
for them in 2015-16. It is not
unreasonable for the government to require prudence in expenditure of public
money, or to demand oversight in the functioning of such schools. Balancing these competing requirements – of
autonomy and public oversight – is a challenge for both parties, and needs them
to work together to ensure the interests of the ultimate beneficiaries, the
students, are fully met.
Our committee visited some of the
aided schools and heard evidence from numerous stakeholders. The problems of these schools essentially
fall into one of several categories:
- Financial viability
- Insufficient rates of financial support
- Procedural delays in obtaining various approvals
- Appointment related issues
- Staff matters, including lack of capacity building and training
- Increasing litigation
One of the major shortcomings we
observed with the system of funding these schools as it exists today, is the
fact that while there are conditions imposed for continuing to receive the
grant-in-aid, none of these relate to academic or school performance. Given that the Delhi SCERT has recently
finalised performance quality indices for its own schools (Dilli
Shaala Siddhi), we felt it would be appropriate to extend these
parameters to aided schools also.
Accordingly, our first and most important recommendation has been to
suggest that performance standards be agreed with each individual aided school
at the beginning of the academic year, and captured in the form of an agreement
between the school management and the Directorate of Education, against which
performance should be assessed on a regular basis. Schools that meet their performance
benchmarks should stand to gain, while those that do not should lose.
The next and obvious step then,
is to reintroduce a system of periodic inspections, to determine how schools
perform over time. In addition to
inspections by the Directorate, we suggested that a panel of external experts
be created, from which people may be drawn in order to ensure regular
inspections of the schools. This would recreate
a culture of regular monitoring, highlighting gaps and ensuring high quality at
all times. Such inspections, including
third party assessments, would also be necessary to provide reports about
schools meeting the performance benchmarks agreed with the Directorate.
Over time, a number of allowances
and grants available to aided schools have either been stopped altogether, or
held at a level where they have been rendered meaningless. We have therefore suggested that grants
previously admissible be restored, and rates of contingency grants currently
paid be linked to an identified price index so that they can be revised from
time to time. Most importantly, we have
recommended that the government – which is already funding 95 percent of aided
school expenses – consider providing an additional 5 percent as incentive to
those schools that meet or exceed their agreed performance benchmarks. In the committee’s view, this would be a
suitable incentive for school managements to perform better.
At the same time, consequences
for non-performance should be severe. The
committee recommended that schools that fail to meet their performance standards
for three consecutive years should either be handed over to another management,
or closed down entirely, with the children and staff being reallocated to
nearby neighbourhood schools. Implementation
of this recommendation in earnest would help send the message that the state government
is serious about improving performance.
We have also made various
suggestions to deal with staffing issues faced by aided schools; for instance,
while government schools are provided with security and sanitation staff in
lieu of Group D posts surrendered, requests from aided schools to outsource
these activities have not been accepted fully.
We recommended that the system being followed for government schools be
extended as-is to aided schools. Other
recommendations dealt with, inter alia,
capacity building of aided school teaching staff in the same manner as
government teachers, easing the recruitment process to make it more efficient
and responsive, providing substitute teachers against long vacancies, and
introducing IT into various processes.
The committee strongly felt that
the aided school model is one that can be successful, with a little more support
from the government. In contrast to those
who recommend fully privatising such schools, we felt that this model is a great
example of so-called public-private partnerships, with private management of
public funds. I hope some of our
recommendations can be implemented by the government over the next few months –
the beneficiaries can only be the children who attend these schools.
[1] The Committee to Review Current
Policy for Government Aided Schools in Delhi.
Our report, although submitted to the government, has not yet been
released in the public domain.
