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| Latha Jishnu: The right to cut-rate education |
| Latha Jishnu / New Delhi Aug 01, 2009, 00:58 IST |
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The right is limited to some children for some kind of schooling with no guarantee of universal access or quality education for all.
How much does the government spend on average on the schooling of a child? One would assume this is a critical figure for calculating not just the input costs but also the outcome. Yet, it is this very figure that is most difficult to come by. Try the Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) or the state education departments. None of them is able to provide an answer with any degree of certainty. As a nation, we simply do not know how much we spend on education.
In the chaotic and multi-layered system of education promoted by the Union and state governments, the cost of schooling per child per annum varies widely. This is the crux of the problem with education in India and also the fundamental reason why the Bill for Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE), just passed by the Rajya Sabha, is hugely flawed.
The Bill perpetuates a discriminatory and non-inclusive system in which the quality of education is dependent on the social classes to which the school caters. For the mass of government schools, funding is extremely tight and thus, quality is largely missing. Let’s take the central government’s hierarchy first. At the apex are the better-funded and better-managed Kendriya Vidyalayas to which admissions are much sought after —remember the chagrin of HRD minister Kapil Sibal when he discovered that 1,000 of the 1,200 recommendations he could make for admission had already been used by his predecessor Arjun Singh? — and whose results are among the best in the country. Sharing the top spot are the elite residential Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas after which come the Sainik Schools and way below them, the subaltern category of ordinary government schools and residential schools for tribal children. Another class of schools will be soon added to the list. During his previous tenure, the Prime Minister had proposed 6,000 ‘model’ schools across the country and this category of more generously funded establishments will be coming up shortly.
The estimate of costs varies greatly. From Rs 15,000 per child annually in the Jawahar Navodayas to Rs 11,000-14,000 in the Kendriya Vidyalayas, it declines to a meagre Rs 1,800-2,500 in the run of government schools. In the complex hierarchies promoted by the Centre and the state governments over the decades, the gradations and quality fluctuate wildly. In the National Capital Territory there are seven different kinds of schools apart those given to the municipal corporation and voluntary organisations to run. Here the expenditure on a child’s education can be as little as Rs 900 annually although some NGOs are getting close to Rs 3,000 per child for running mobile schools which operate out of buses.
The problem with the RTE Bill is that it does little to set quality standards. Well-known education activist and lawyer Ashok Agarwal says the Bill should have insisted that all government-run schools should be of the level of the Kendriya Vidyalayas. “The government is spending public money on running exclusive schools meant for people of a higher socio-economic status whereas children of the poor and the marginalised sections of society are forced to make do with less than a tenth of the expenditure. “This is in utter violation of Articles 14, 21 and 21A of the constitution,” says the lawyer who has filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court against the discriminatory system and sought a direction that all state and state-supported schools should adhere to a standard framework with a clearly defined per capita expenditure and also follow a common framework for admission. The PIL was filed in June 2008 and notices have been issued to the 36 respondents. In April this year, a committee was set up by the Central Government to look into these issues.
However, the expenditure patterns show that little is being done to redress the issue. The budget allocations for the government’s flagship programme for providing education to the mass of children, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), has been falling since 2007. From an outlay of Rs 12,020 crore in 2007-08 (revised estimates), the allocation declined to Rs 11,940 crore in 2008-09 (revised estimates). For the current year, it is Rs 11,934 crore. To make matters worse, states have been told to raise their contribution to SSA without any increase in the funds devolving to the states.
But overall, one of the more serious drawbacks of the Bill is that it excludes children below six years of age from its provisions. This, say educationists and activists, is a denial of the fundamental right of children already given to them by the Supreme Court through the Unnikrishnan Judgment of 1993. By reading Article 45 of the Constitution in conjunction with Article 21, that judgement declared ‘free and compulsory education’ a fundamental Right of all children until they complete the age of 14. The pending Bill, if enacted, will result in 170 million children below six years of age losing their fundamental right to balanced nutrition, health care and pre-primary education in what are undeniably the most formative years. In an appeal to the Speaker Meira Kumar, the All India Forum for Right to Educati on headed by the redoubtable educationist Anil Sadgopal has pointed out what is a major lacuna along with several other drawbacks. It says the Bill distorts the concept of ‘neighbourhood school’ as defined by Parliament and thereby compels poor children to study in inferior quality schools and also maintains SSA’s discriminatory multi-layered school system by ‘permitting the government to build schools of entirely unacceptable, ambiguous and sub-standard norms and standards’.
Was this done on cost considerations? The financial memorandum on the Bill says it is not possible to quantify the financial requirement for implementing the bill ‘at this stage’. At the same time, the central government, it says, will prepare the estimates of capital and recurring expenditure and provide to the states as grants-in-aid of revenues such percentage of expenditure as it may determine from time to time. This clearly is not a reassuring outlook for either the states or for the children. While Sibal has assured the nation that a group is preparing the estimates and that “Once the Bill is enacted, we will make a demand for additional resources”, critics say there is an attempt here to fudge facts. Sadgopal, a former professor of education at the University of Delhi, points out that a financial estimate of Rs 2,28,000 crore as an additionality over the next seven years was sent by the ministry to the cabinet secretariat in February 2008 after due approval of the Planning Commission.
So why the reluctance to put a figure to what the reforms will entail? One view is that the government is unwilling to make a commitment on this score for fear of delaying the bill further. Education activists, however, are rubbing in the fact that the total expenditure on this sector has been declining since the 1990s and is just 3.5 per cent of the GDP instead of the 6 per cent recommended by the Kothari Commission — the 1966 report of the commission continues touchstone for education reforms in the country — and reflects the lack of earnestness in improving education.
Given the strong reservation of the critics and the reluctance of the government to make clear the funding requirements, will the Bill pass muster in the Lok Sabha?
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