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India’s Right to Education Bill
Sach Kanwal
Singh
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Members of the Diaspora in richer countries wanted to contribute
but the state has failed to evolve any model or policy to
facilitate that. Those who took the initiative found to their
chagrin that the government's role is more of an obstructionist.
In this paradigm of education sector's administration, one
welcomes even a half measure like the Right to Education Bill.
Now, we will be watching the implementation. |
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 At
a time when the economic survey document presented by the Punjab
Government in the state Assembly has shown that the school dropout
rate for Class I to Class V in 2005-2006 had touched 25.71 per cent
from the already shameful 24.12 percent recorded in 1999-2000, it is
heartening that under a Sikh Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, the
country is taking one tentative step forward with the parliament
clearing a bill giving children the right to education.
By no means is
the step revolutionary, as is being projected. The hype around it
also has an air of duplicity to it. On Monday when the Rajya Sabha
passed the bill, there was just a small bunch of MPs present in the
House. In any case, The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory
Education Bill comes seven years after Parliament amended the
Constitution to incorporate that right.
The Sikh
community which prides itself for being a People of the Book
(Ahle-Kitaab) is pained to see the continuous decline in school
standards, attendance, quality of education, sector administration
and the picture emerging from the school students' data. It is sad
that the Akali Dal-BJP government as well as the previous Congress
governments have done precious little in this regard except for
harebrainers like Adarsh Schools.
There is no end
to members of the Diaspora in richer countries which wanted to
contribute but the state has failed to evolve any model or policy to
facilitate that. The few individuals who have taken the initiative
have found to their chagrin that the government's role is more of an
obstructionist than of leading by example. In this paradigm of
education sector's administration, one welcomes even a half measure
like the Right to Education Bill.
We call it a
half-measure because even though it is being tom-tommed as a Bill
that will address most of the key concerns, the fact remains that
once it is passed by Parliament, its intent can be easily nullified
unless followed up with responsive implementation. It is here that
India
has often failed its citizens.
There had come a
stage when the government had all but buried the Bill citing lack of
funds.
The pressure for
such silent burial was strong from the private school lobby. Private
schools opposed the Bill as it mandates that even private and elite
schools reserve 25% seats for poor children.
Thankfully, the
sub-committee the Central Advisory Board Education which prepared
the draft Bill held this provision as a significant prerequisite for
creating a democratic and egalitarian society.
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Save Punjab’s Future
Punjab
Government has made it mandatory that English be taught as a
language from Class I. Many middle class advocates of English
language hailed the decision. This one step, they had argued,
will change the face of educated school students in Punjab.
Worse was bound to happen, and is happening.
Someone
asked a strong opponent of the English language teaching from
Class I, Dr T R Sharma, the man who had headed the Education
Department of the Punjabi University for some two decades and is
considered a sage across the board, whether it troubled him to
know that the students will be taught English. "No, not at all,"
he said, adding, "My fear instead is that they will do to
English language teaching what they have done to Punjabi."
Till date,
the Punjab School Education Board does not have a single English
language teacher. English is taught across Punjab in the
PSEB-run schools by Social Science teachers, or drawing
teachers, or maths teachers.
Data of
teacher-less schools, single-teacher schools, headmaster-less
schools, toilet-less schools, schools without drinking water
facility is too shocking. Punjab’s future generations are in
danger of being lost in a world that places so much reliance on
education. |
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In fact, even
the Law Commission, which prepared an alternative draft Bill, said
50% of seats should be reserved for the poor in all schools,
irrespective of management or financing.
The principle
behind this was to end the divide between the rich and the poor in
the school system. Educationists refused to swallow the specious
reasons given by the government.
Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh has often spoken of inclusive growth. And no such
thing is possible without inclusive education. India is infamous for
the vast divide between government schools and private schools,
sarkari education machinery and the private big bucks education.
Thankfully, the Bill, by inducting private and unaided schools in
this effort, and not placing the onus only on government-funded or
-assisted schools, has the potential, at least in theory, to address
issues larger than just the provision of education for all.
The bill
provides children in the six-to-fourteen age group with the right to
free and compulsory education in a “neighbourhood school”. This
obviously includes government schools. But in a departure of public
policy towards school vouchers, it entitles certain disadvantaged
and weaker groups to 25 per cent of seats in government-aided
(including Kendriya Vidyalayas) and unaided (that is, private)
schools. Unaided schools will be reimbursed an amount equal to their
tuition fee or the per-capita student expenditure in government
schools, whichever is lower.
The success of
the programme will be in the detail: how accountable will the
referral authority be, how large-hearted schools can be in averting
differentiation in their classes, how inventive orientation
programmes for lateral admission will be, how incidentals will be
funded. But for a society as desperate to break the perpetuation of
class stratification as India should be, this shift towards what
amounts to a common school system is welcome. It begins to set right
the pyramid in affirmative action programmes, in making more equal
the opportunities any Indian has to make good on the strength of her
education. Any number of case studies has shown that quotas in
higher education have less than optimum outcomes because of the
inequalities left unaddressed at the lower education stage.
 It is therefore
important the implementation be as transparent as can be. Policy
must be clear on the mechanism by which students will be picked for
certain schools, so that local patronage and corruption chains do
not develop. And even as the right to education is operationalised
at the earliest, there must be keen monitoring of enrolments and
some checks of standards. This is because, for the first time, by
policy, the wall of separation between state and private schools has
been breached. Delivery and regulatory mechanisms in this uncharted
area must be refined based on real-time experience.
Let us remember
that there is no modern industrial economy in the world that does
not have at least 80 per cent literacy.
India
is much below.
The Constituent
Assembly of India had said it would be “cheating the nation” by not
providing education to all, 60 years down the road India is yet to
accomplish this fundamental goal.
22
July 2009
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