Learn to count

Government should work on school quality now

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often, and correctly, stressed the fact that laws can be made, but it is the government's implementation - its delivery of services - that is important. Under the last government, the United Progressive Alliance, the limits of the reverse approach had become all too clear. Major schemes need to be revamped now to focus on effectiveness and delivery. And, as new data from the Annual State of Education Report (Rural) make clear, the task is daunting. Barely a quarter of rural students enrolled in the fifth grade can read a basic sentence in English; and only a similar proportion in the third grade is capable of subtraction.

Other numbers are equally damning. The percentage of children in Class II who are completely innumerate actually increased - by nine percentage points, to nearly 20 per cent - between 2009 and 2014. In some ways, this number reveals a success as well as a failure. Under the expansion of the school system - first under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and then under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance - enrolment rates have vastly increased. Now, almost every single Indian in the age group of between six and 14 years is in school. But this has gone hand-in-hand with increased stress on the public sector school system. Parents who care about their children's education scrimp and save in order to send them to private schools - even in rural India, almost a third of children are privately educated. The reasons are clear. For example, twice as many children can add and subtract in private schools as in public schools. The proportion of children in Class III who can read at least words is just over half in government schools - but nearly 80 per cent in private schools. Worse, the proportion of such children has fallen in government schools from nearly three-fourths in 2010 to half in 2014. Naturally, parents will respond by paying out of pocket for private schooling. This is the indication of a massive failure.

This is not a question of the scale of investment. Assigning money in the Budget is not the task at hand. The task is making it simpler for money to reach the schools on time; and for that money to then be used in the way the school sees fit. Finally, it needs last-mile reform. Teachers must be held accountable. If they are paid next to nothing and then left unsupervised, then they will make money through moonlighting in private schools or as tutors, rather than turning up to class. Radical changes in policy should not be off the table. Local supervision of schools is one - parents, who are most able to observe teacher quality, should be the basic source of accountability.

Mr Modi's government should not be held responsible for these findings. This is a problem it has inherited. But its response should be constructive. Ways to improve the quality of public schools, and to make private schooling cheaper, should be on the anvil. This, and not rejigging institutions to increase Hindutva representation, should be the focus of the human resources development ministry.