Padma Prakash: 12th pass and after

MOOT POINT

Our dhobi's son is "12th pass". He completed secondary schooling hoping that it would expand his employment opportunities. But with a pass class, he can neither get into a degree college nor find a job. So he is forced to help his father. The local cobbler's family has an even more interesting tale to narrate. The family had to make a choice between allowing either the son or the daughter to study beyond the 10th grade, for they needed at least one extra pair of hands to run the business. They made a rational choice. In Maharashtra girls' education is free up to the secondary level and girls can also travel free on the local train to college. So his daughter completed the 12th grade while his son dropped out of school after the 10th grade. But after two years, when his son began to explore vocational courses, he couldn't find a seat in any except a "diploma" in leather craft and trade, which he wasn't interested in pursuing. So he dropped out of the educational system altogether and is now, ironically enough, helping his father in his "business".

This is an urban scenario no doubt. But the stories are not very different in the villages and small towns. For, a large proportion of the 12th plus students face an educational wasteland. Pursuing a degree course is an option for the relatively comfortably-off. The others can either take part time skill-building courses or seek employment. Given that an estimated 22 million children are expected to be in the ninth and tenth grades by 2010, this is a dismal picture. Moreover, today there is an 85 per cent transition rate from grade eight to the ninth and enrolments are rising. Even though the pass percentages at the 10th and 12th grades range from 40 per cent to 75 per cent across the states, there is substantial growth of the 12 plus population. It is important to remember that adolescents (between 10 and 19 years) form one-fifth of the population.

The preliminary report of the CABE Committee on Universalisation of Secondary Education released in late 2005 has talked of a paradigm shift pointing out that this is the first time since Independence that attention is being paid to this level of the school system. It is here, perhaps, that provision can be made for offering real and affordable choices. The education system needs to be made less rigid allowing for students to pick subject sets that suit them best. It is incredible, for instance, that at age 16 or earlier children have to make a choice between natural sciences and an arts stream. This leads to distortions of various kinds. For instance, psychology that might do well with integrating a biology base falls in the arts stream and ordinarily has no links at the undergraduate level to the natural sciences. And of course it puts paid to realising the long-standing dream of inculcating "scientific temper".

Should educational strategies not be directed at expanding choices? In the IT sector, for instance, the level of skill building on offer at the run of the mill 10 plus educational institution is not enough even for data entry operations. So the student has to acquire this skill outside the system paying a high fee. And because the fee structure is so unaffordable, skill upgrade cannot take place except rarely in the work environment.

The lack of mobility and limited choice within the educational system are best illustrated in the health sciences. There are today avenues for 12 plus students to train as ANMs and nurses. But upward mobility is almost impossible within the health care stream. A nurse can never become a doctor through further study and training. In many developed countries those in the "lower" levels of the health hierarchy have an opportunity to move up. This is impossible in India, giving rise to an unhealthy "caste" system of sorts within system, and to the skewed human power patterns in health care. Increasingly, this is what is happening in the IT sector"" the saving grace being the many infotech teaching shops that have sprung up that afford some degree of mobility at a price. If nurses could become doctors, then as likely as not, the face of the medical profession would dramatically change.

This general blind spot about young people's growing aspirations is exemplified by the cobbler's son's experience. He said everywhere he went he was repeatedly told that he should learn skills that had to do with his father's (and his traditional) occupation""leather work. And he was certain that he did not want to follow that path even if it meant that he might find employment in a large shoe/leather goods factory. The upsurge of interest in keeping alive and encouraging traditional crafts has made it that much more difficult for young people wanting to move out of these paths even as such development is creating new employment opportunities. While some may re-discover traditional crafts and industry, others will move out. It is for the education system to provide the resources for such mobility. Sometimes, there is a danger that in our anxiety to define national development goals, we forget to make space in policy for personal aspirations that are a product of the emerging socio-economic buoyancy.