 "Ashish Dhawan")
Ashish Dhawan, founder and CEO of Central Sqaure Foundation is working on creating a country-wide database for India on 'Know My School' portal that will provide information on all primary schools in the country based on 200 parameters including board examination results. While this will go a long way in helping parents assess schools better, Dhawan believes that the Centre can go a long way in solving India's primary education problems, even though it remains a state subject. Excerpts from an interview with Anjuli Bhargava
The ministry of HRD is working on a new education policy. What in your view are the critical things we need done for primary education in India?
K12. The size of the problem is staggering. 250 million children, 1.5 million schools, 9 million teachers.
National Achievement Survey (NAS), the sample survey done by NCERT has been improved but it is not up to the mark. Look at any of the developed countries (New Zealand, US or even China) or even the emerging markets they have state run systems that assess how various states are performing. The system needs to measure outcomes, not inputs.
The architecture we need is a national survey done by NCERT that is robust. We need a standardised assessment run by the state which is census-based - for example,in classes 3, 5, 7, one can see the progression in students and that tests conceptual understanding. You can look at different districts and find the weaker schools. Within schools, the management can assess which concepts are not clear. So the weak spots can be identified.
In NAS, we have a decent instrument but poor implementation. So states that seem to be in the bottom half of the ASER report (Annual State Education Report done by Pratham) are at the top in NAS surveys so its credibility is under cloud.
But the Centre often washes its hands off education saying it is a state subject.
We need to relook the role of the Centre. The role of the Centre is not to implement. It is to set standards. The Centre is to assess whether states are following the standards set and it has to incentivise states to follow the best practices.
The Centre has to cull out good practices from different states and encourage other states to follow. The US and other countries do this effectively. They offer financial incentives to states that change laws in accordance with what the Centre believes is desirable. The states that follow and actually change get monetary incentives.
Today, fund allocation for schools across states is based on either need or enrolment (like the mid-day meal scheme). We need to add this as a third component in the design of the Centre's budget. If you have changed certain things, you are entitled to money based on that.
The incentive model needs to be extended further to school leadership. At government schools, there is simply no incentive for performance. The senior most teacher becomes the principal. Principals are chosen based on how many years they have put in rather than how they have performed. Promotions are based entirely on tenure.
What about the regulation of private schools ? There seems to be no check on that either - everyone is turning international, schools are charging capitation fees for entry.
Forty three per cent of Indian children study in private schools today. This is growing at the rate of 1.5 per cent a year. As per my assessment, this number will touch 60 per cent by 2025, something virtually unheard of in most large countries of the world. China is 5 per cent. USA is 18 per cent.
But in India, because the state system has failed, even something that is offered for free is not taken up by most. Government school teachers send their children to private schools.
Since the private sphere is so large, it is important that the government segregate its service provider role from its regulator role. A TRAI like regulator is needed urgently. Despite the fact that an increasing proportion of education is in private hands, there is no regulator to monitor the sector. We need a separate autonomous regulator that monitors private and government.
