The South Asian: Education Reform: The Need for A Debate

September 21, 2009

Education Reform: The Need for A Debate The new UPA government is making a renewed attempt at education reform through a variety of efforts including the Right to Education Bill that had been scuttled in 2008 after fierce opposition. While there has been discussion in the mainstream media on certain aspects of these reforms, they have been rather skewed.

For example, there is much discussion on the recent policy to end 10^th standard exams in schools affiliated with certain boards. While the discussion around this issue is important, it is important to note that this policy currently only affects a small section of India’s students. Most students in India that are part of a variety of state boards are currently not affected though states might decide to take on similar policies based on results. Much of the discussions in the media have focused on the transition and the impact – many news paper editorials and opinion pieces have argued that it will affect competitiveness and placement of CBSE students in subsequent academic institutions.
In my opinion, this is perhaps one attempt at reform that is most meaningful. Exams are not meant to provide feedback to students on how well they understand a concept – for most part, students usually know. They are also not effective in helping teachers understand how their students are doing – research on cognitive processes and classroom teaching methods clearly show that an average teacher will usually know the level of a student’s understanding through effectively interacting with the student. The primary goal of these exams has been to categorize students, to judge which students can effectively answer exams. It clearly puts enormous stress on students that in fact detracts from their learning.
While comments that students may be affected during transition as well as fears about implementation of the policy may be well founded, in my opinion, this is one policy that perhaps has the student (not future academic institutions or supply chain of skilled labour) in mind. What is necessary for successful deployment of the policy (in a way that truly helps learning and helps students grow and be successful) is the development of curricula that encourages hands on applications (in projects, in local community efforts, etc) that helps students contextualize the learning as well as ruminate on the richness and intricacies of concepts learned.
It would be appropriate to point out that the NCERT curricula developed per the vision of Prof. Krishna Kumar is excellent and compares favorably with curricula developed in any ‘developed’ country. In its own right, this curricula is a significant step in advancement of education in India. My understanding, however, is that curricula has not been adopted extensively.
Beyond this policy though, there are other efforts that present bigger issues and have not been as widely discussed. There is an effort to significantly privatize education in India driven by the claim that the Indian government infrastructure is unable to provide for its children. This was already presented by the Kothari commission which pointed out that India needed to increase spending on education to 6% to meet minimal needs of educating its children. That continues to be true. The UPA government’s plan of privatizing education does not make sense since most of those who have little access to education or have access to schools that hardly teach cannot consume education by the private sector who would invest only for a profitable return on investment.
Many have argued that vouchers will help resolve this problem. This also is questionable. For one, it would require the government to put in additional funds to support these vouchers in a way that all children can have access to quality education. The cost of education in decent government schools is about Rs 300-800 per month. The tuition of private schools is much higher. It is also unlikely that many private schools would welcome poor children (given social, class and caste barriers). An extensive analysis of vouchers – and its myths – is provided by this article. Suffice to say that independent studies have shown the voucher system in the US and other developed countries to by no more effective and significantly more expensive. What it does do, is provide government funds to private entities.
The newer version of the education bill titled “Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009’ has left many disappointed. For one, it demands free and compulsory education on children between 6-14. However, there is little in terms of mechanisms to ensure that all children have access to such education. For example, how will the government ensure that all street kids get to go to schools? How will it ensure that children who are part of the child labour force (which the government claims is a very small one) get to go to school? How will it ensure that the schools (that are supposed to provide this free and compulsory education) are actually functioning?
In addition, the Act says little about the quality of education. There are no metrics. Is it enough that this “Free and Compulsory Education” teach children to read and write? Or does it demand a certain proficiency in math, sciences, languages, humanities and the arts?
While the government has demanded that 25% of seats in private schools be reserved for economically backward sections, neither has this been uniformly implemented or policed, nor is this enough. Private schools hardly have the capacity to truly provide opportunities for a much larger fraction of students from poorer communities who have little or no access to quality education.
This act also does not cover children from 3-6. This is unfortunate since a child in a private school would already be in grade 1 by the age of 6, would have a fairly good handle on her alphabets and numbers as well as numerous concepts that are necessary for continued success in this education process. A child being provided ‘Free and Compulsory’ education would hardly be able to compete or participate.
Numerous education reformers and educationists have opposed this Act and argued that this will further formalize the concept of two kinds of education for children in the country – providing government mandate that the poor do not need good education. Many have pointed to a mechanism of public (government) schools in USA, for example, where all children in a certain neighborhood have the right to attend that school irrespective of their social or economic class or their caste.
The Act, in fact, seems to be a mechanism to further strengthen the effort to privatize education and make the government less (not more) responsible for investing in building the children of the country. In not providing mechanisms of ensuring such education nor demanding any metrics (from itself or from the institutions that will implement these policies) that will define the quality of education, the government has side-stepped the issue of accountability. Thus, the government does not have to commit to what is needed to build quality education for all – 6% of GDP as per the Kothari commission recommendation.

- Sanat Mohanty

Posted by collective at September 21, 2009 11:26 AM

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