Amartya Sen calls for radical reform in primary education

Economist and Nobel-laureate Amartya Sen has made a strong case for the need for a radical reform in primary school curriculum. This would reduce the curriculum overload in primary education in the country, making “home tasks redundant and private tuition unnecessary”.

He has also stressed that there exists “a particular need to recognise the fierce urgency of curriculum reform. The importance of recognising explicitly the role of class barriers in educational underachievement also stood as being in pressing need of recognition, he observed.

Releasing The Pratichi Trust Education Report-II in Kolkata today, Sen indicated he would raise this issue at Delhi and Dhaka in February to build an opinion on this serious problem.

The Pratichi Trust, in its second report on primary education in West Bengal, has resurveyed the same schools it had surveyed for its first report for 2001-2002, to draw a comparison with what it had observed seven years ago. Thus, the survey was conducted at 34 primary schools 34 Shishu Shiksha Kendra (SSK) in six districts — West Medinipur, Purulia, Bardhaman, Birbhum, Murshidabad and Darjeeling.

The study appreciated the significant improvements in the performance as well as coverage of primary education in West Bengal over those seven years ago.

It pointed out that there still remained defects and infelicities that must be overcome.

The most worrisome finding that Sen highlighted in the report was the growing dependence on private tuition. He id it was a “real regression”. According to the report, the proportion of children relying on private tuition has gone up significantly. Admittedly, this is not peculiar to India. Even countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan are embracing this trend. But, Sen warns: “The harm, however, is much greater when private tuition becomes “essential” (rather than merely competitively advantageous for the fortunate), especially — as in India — when most families of first generation school-goers are not able to afford this artificially-generated essentiality.”

Sen reminded that belonging to a scheduled caste (SC) or scheduled tribe (ST) and coming from Muslim community was not merely an indicator of caste or community background, but also, statistically, something of a proxy for class-related handicap. While 13 per cent of SC children in Class-III and -IV could not read, 25 per cent of Muslim children and 29 per cent of ST children could not, either. For the rest of the population, this proportion was merely 8 per cent.

He warned that the much higher proportions of educational failure of deprived groups demanded concentrated and urgent attention. Expressing concern over this scenario, Sen observed “schooling can be a major force in breaking down class barriers, and we have to be especially careful that the educational system with differential facilities does not end up perpetuating the rigidity of class boundaries.