Shaky foundation

The Indian Constitution envisages universal elementary education as a public good that contributes to the building of an egalitarian, just and democratic social order — by providing free and compulsory schooling to all children of our country up to the age of 14 years. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 — which replaces the 1986 NEP — underlines the vision of India's education system. Some of the salient features of the NEP relating to elementary education are as follows:

1) Use of mother tongue or local language as the medium of instruction till class 5. This model is recommended up to class 8. No language will be imposed on students. The language policy is advisory in nature. It's up to the states, institutions and schools to decide on the implementation.

2) A comprehensive framework ranging from elementary education to higher education, along with vocational training in both rural and urban India.

3) Exams to be held for classes 2, 5, and 8 and board exams for classes 10 and 12.

The numbers

There are as many as 15.08 lacs schools in India; out of which 11.16 lacs are govt/govt aided schools — accounting for approximately 75 per cent. Besides, more than 12 lakh schools impart elementary education, and again, approximately 80 per cent of those are govt/govt aided schools. While we have 9.7 million teachers teaching over 265 million students in higher secondary, the students in elementary classes are nearly 187 million. Out of these 187 million, 115 million — around 62 per cent — are in govt/govt aided schools. Over the years, the momentum is changing in favor of private schools for various reasons. As per the govt data, in 2006, the share of govt schools in the elementary category was 87 per cent which has come down by 12 percent in 15 years.

There are more than 10 lakh govt schools imparting elementary education to over 115 million students. Some 36 lakh odd teachers are deployed in these 10 lakh schools to decide the fates of 115 lakh children. How has it been going on? There have been concerns over the quality of education in these govt schools, the only centers for learning for the children of the vast majority of India.

The issues

Drop outs

Even as the retention rate improved over the years, standing at 87 per cent for the primary section in March 2020, the onslaught of Covid might have brought it down. The retention rate for elementary level, as a whole, had been 75 per cent during the same period — implying the dropout rate of 25 per cent. On the availability of basic amenities, more than 95 per cent of schools have drinking water and toilets. It's less than 90 per cent for electricity and the library. When we talk of digitization, undoubtedly, there has been transformation in some vital areas like payment methodology and DBT. But for those over 115 million children in over one million schools, the reality is far from satisfactory. The children of more than 60 per cent of schools are yet to see a computer. Worse still, 90 per cent of schools don't have access to internet facilities.

How can we think of a strong, modernized, atma nirbhar Bharat aiming at a USD 5 trillion economy, with these 115 million children deprived of basic amenities in school?

We are a 5,000 years old society and our system of learning and teaching was the envy of the whole world a few hundred years ago. We had Nalanda which was a global university for more than 750 years (427 AD to 1197 AD). We also had Takshshila, (now in Pakistan) another centre for great learning in as early as 8th century BC. We can proudly say we have some of the best centers of learning in higher education — our IITs, our IIMs and some of our universities and research centers — along with some of the best elementary and higher secondary schools, the Doon school type. We have around 100 universities, some 40,000 odd colleges and 15 lakh schools. The numbers are impressive but what is more important is the quality of education, and the affordability for the vast majority.

Multi-layered school system

It is universally accepted that children with special talent or aptitude should be provided opportunities to proceed at a faster pace, by making good quality education available to them irrespective of their capacity to pay for it. We have the Navodaya schools in each of the 750 odd districts. While this is a Central govt-sponsored and -funded scheme, some state Govts have also followed suit. Odisha Govt's Adarsh school in every block and the 5T transformation initiatives are indeed praiseworthy.

But then this brings a kind of distortion to the already multilayered school system. The state has the responsibility for providing "good quality education" for not only the relatively bright students but for all the students in the age group of 6 to 14.

Teachers

There are nearly 10 million teachers teaching over 265 million students. Some four million of them are in the one million govt elementary schools who are teaching some 115 million children. What we see there is just not an adequate number of permanent teachers in the schools. Contractual teachers cannot be a substitute for the trained permanent teachers. We also see large-scale teachers' absenteeism in many of our backward/tribal districts.

Transition from a promise and commitment towards universal, free and compulsory education to the current division to formal and informal schools with trained and well-paid teachers on the one hand and partially trained, ill-equipped and under-paid teachers on the other, is visible across all the states. Our social scientists have emphasised caste-class, rural-urban and gender divides. There is another dimension to this; the sharp avoidable division by the multi layered education structure. School education should never be a kind of class-based process.

The NEP 2020 reaffirms the recommendation of increase in public investment on education to 6 per cent of the GDP. It has been around three per cent all these years. All the developed countries spend more than 5 per cent of their GDP on education. India cannot progress in real sense if we continue with the multilayered school system and deprive millions of our children of quality education.

The writer is Senior Advisor, IBA. Views expressed are personal