Passing the buck

After the furore over the human resource development ministry’s interference in the institutes of technology and management, the next battle area could well be privately run schools.

The proposed Free and Compulsory Education Bill may never see the light of day, since a new Parliament is to be elected and a new government (with a new minister?) will be in place.

Indeed, it must be hoped that the ideas encapsulated in the Bill never meet with parliamentary acceptance, because what the Bill sought to do is dramatically increase the control of politicians and bureaucrats over private schools.

If government-appointed committees, at various levels, are going to decide what percentage of poor students are to be admitted free of cost in privately-run schools (the Bill says the maximum percentage will be 20) and even who these students will be, it allows for enormous discretion, and— given the premium on admission into some schools — the near certainty of rampant misuse and the birth of a new and pernicious patronage system.

Apart from the issue of legitimising the babu’s control over the private school system, the clear purpose behind the Bill was merely to pass the buck.

If the government spends up to 4 per cent of the country’s GDP on education (around half of this is on primary education), and there is still a 40 per cent drop-out ratio at even the primary level, and most children can’t read or write their names (as some studies have shown), clearly there’s a problem with the government education system.

It isn’t delivering. Studies show that the cost per student at government schools is 20-30 per cent higher than that at quality private schools. For private unrecognised schools, the costs are much lower, sometimes even a half.

So, while the Bill sought to pass on some of the burden of primary education to private schools, it didn’t address the issue of the massive waste in government schooling.

Instead of the government forcing admission into private schools, it should be looking at ways of handing over government schools to reputed school managements, with the specific charter to improve standards and results, at lower cost, within a specified time frame.

The other, choice- enhancing method would be to issue coupons to poor students. This allows parents the freedom to choose the private school where they want to send their children, as opposed to a situation where a government committee takes this decision.

But such rational solutions have been anathema to Murli Manohar Joshi, who has specialised in making Indian education regress in every way during his utterly disastrous tenure as HRD minister.