Saying yes to detention

In a flurry of reforms, the Delhi government is proposing to introduce several changes to school education, including the way schools admit students, keeping a stricter watch on school accounts and scrapping the no-detention policy that was introduced in the Right to Education Act.

Of all the proposals, the one that the government urgently needs to push forward with is scrapping no detention. Although the proposal is well-intended, it has failed to work, especially in the segments for which it was mainly intended.

Here's why. In the condominium where I live, a lot of children of the house helps study in a government school nearby. It's a school with 500-odd students across all ages with no standardised class sizes. The families are largely low-income, where typically both parents work in the unorganised sector - rickshaw pullers, drivers, maids, cleaning and cooking jobs. Small children - between four and 12 - study at the school and do most of their school work largely unsupervised. Parents have neither the time nor the bandwidth to help their wards - even in the rare instance where one of the parents is partially educated. Most are uneducated.

It all flows smoothly till the child reaches class VIII. Whether they put in the effort or not, the no-detention policy ensures that children are promoted. Very few parents are in a position to assess whether their children are learning anything.

The students, barring one or two exceptions, are promoted year after year even if they cannot read a full sentence in English or Hindi. Some may be able to do some simple addition but most struggle with anything beyond that.

The no-detention policy ensures that no pressure at all builds up for the child till class VIII. Children are aware that they will be promoted in any case. So even those who have the aptitude never put in any real effort. For the laggards, life is easy too.

The students then enter class IX and finally face a real examination. Several of the students at this stage fail miserably. In one of my house help's daughter's class, 28 out of the 35 children had failed in more than four to five subjects. The parents promptly assume that their child is not meant for studies or doesn't have it in her and pull the student out. She is all of 12-13 years, mostly unemployable even as house help as she is too young - so she stays at home and tends to younger siblings or helps with household chores.

When I asked two of my house helps why they had withdrawn their children, they argued that they had no choice and regretted not having put some pressure on the children to study. They blamed the system for promoting their children even when they seemed inadequate. But at 12-13, they did not have the wherewithal to put them through the extra tuitions that they required. One of them was doing it for her son but she didn't think it was worth it for her daughter.

In private schools - the better ones - no detention does no real harm, so to speak, but it has failed to provide any real advantage. As one of the teachers explained to me, at their school (which has several thousand students), most children, especially the ones who are academically weak, are provided so much remedial coaching - tests, re-tests and yet more tests - that by the time they reach class VIII, almost none is in such a poor position as to fail altogether. Even in junior classes, some amount of pressure is kept up so that it does not come as a total shock to the student in class IX. In general, the parents also keep a keener eye on their wards. Students are on tuitions as early as classes III and IV as parents may not have the time but have the wherewithal to provide the extra coaching.

There are to my mind some major learnings from this. One, there is no one-size-fits-all. What works or doesn't work for smaller cities, state boards and government schools may not work for the private or elite schools.

Two, in a system that has been built upon and thrives on pressure, removing all pressure till a certain stage and then bringing it on in full force leads to more disruption (in this case, drop-outs) than anything else. It may be well intentioned but the no-detention policy is working against those it was primarily designed for.
anjuli.bhargava@gmail.com