A Brief History of India’s Education System

Part 5: Towards Free, Equitable, Quality Education

[This article is a part of a series of articles on ‘India’s Education Journey: From Macaulay to NEP’. This is the tenth part of this series. The previous articles have been published in previous issues of Janata Weekly.]

Many people in India, even if they are supporters of capitalist competition, agree that all children in society should be provided genuinely free, compulsory and equitable education of good quality.

However, simultaneously, they also argue that there is no alternative to sending children to private schools because government schools are of poor quality and have poor learning outcomes. Let us examine how much truth there is in this argument.

Can the Public Sector Provide Good Quality Education?

All developed countries, and most middle income developing countries, have well-funded public (that is, government) education systems, which provide excellent quality free and compulsory education to all children—at least elementary and secondary education, and in most countries, higher secondary education too. Even though all these countries are capitalist countries, their policy makers realise that if all children, irrespective of their family background and income levels, are to be provided equitable and good quality education, it can only be done in the public sector; the private sector will only invest in education for profit.

If these countries can provide good quality education in the public sector, why can’t India also do the same, instead of privatising its public education system?

Actually, in India too, when the government so desires, it does run good schools! Even today, the government-run Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas are considered among the best-run schools in the country. And these school networks are not small: there are 1,251 Kendriya Vidyalayas in the country having 13.9 lakh students on their rolls, while 2.76 lakh students study in the 650 Navodaya Vidyalayas located in rural areas across the country.[1] So the problem in India is not that the government cannot run good schools; the problem is that it does not want to run ALL its schools well.

What most people don’t realise is: the government has deliberately allowed the condition of government-run schools to deteriorate. As discussed in the previous chapters, till the late 1980s, there were very few private schools in the country, and most children, even of the middle and upper classes, used to study in government schools. Nearly all the eminent intellectuals and academicians in the country today aged 60 and above have studied in government schools.

This is not to say that the government schools were in excellent condition in those days. There was much scope for improvement. For that, a key requirement was that the government increase its expenditure on education to at least 6 percent of the GDP as recommended by the Kothari Commission way back in 1966, and, along with that, energise and restructure the entire public-funded school education system in the country.

Instead, in the early 1990s, the government accepted World Bank conditionalities and launched a deliberate assault on the government school system. It began starving it of funds and started replacing the cadre of regular and trained teachers with para-teachers—underqualified, ill-trained and underpaid young persons appointed on short-term contracts. This resulted in a rapid deterioration in the quality of government schools. Simultaneously, in the name of expansion, a parallel stream of all kinds of non-formal education was promoted. Since 2014, this trend has only intensified under the Modi-led BJP government.

The decline in quality of government schools, resulting in low learning levels, has shaken the faith of people in the capability of the government to provide good quality education to children, and they have begun withdrawing their children from the public-funded school system. Those who can afford it have begun to send their children to private schools that are mushrooming all over the country. This in turn has provided an alibi for the government to shut down or privatise its schools. This was the precise objective of the World Bank-dictated neoliberal reforms, and they have more than succeeded in their objective.

Improving the Quality of Government Schools

The way to improve government schools was powerfully demonstrated by the Collector of Erode (Tamil Nadu), Dr. R. Anandakumar, in June 2011. That year, he admitted his daughter to the Tamil-medium Panchayat Union (government) School at Kumalankuttai near the Collectorate. She also began eating the mid-day meal served in the school.

What happened next is revealing and provides a cue for improving the government school system. As soon as news spread that the Collector’s child was studying in the school, panchayat officials inspected the premises to ensure that all basic facilities were in place. Until then, they had shown little concern, as it was only the children of the marginalised who were studying there! The punctuality of the teachers improved. The sanitary staff began visiting the school and cleaning the toilets twice a day.[2]

This example shows that if senior bureaucrats, MPs, MLAs and middle- and upper-middle-class families start sending their children to government schools, the school inspection machinery will automatically crank up, school infrastructure and facilities will start improving and pressure will mount on the government to employ trained, regular and well-paid teachers in schools. Teachers will start teaching and the problem of teacher absenteeism will vanish. Public pressure will mount on the State to increase its allocations for education.

Recognising this, the Allahabad High Court, in a landmark judgement delivered on 18 August 2015, directed the Uttar Pradesh Government to ensure that:

the children/wards of government servants, semi-government servants, local bodies, representatives of people, judiciary and all such persons who receive any perk, benefit or salary, etc. from State exchequer or public fund, send their child/children/wards who are in age of receiving primary education, to primary schools run by Board… and ensure to make penal provisions for those who violate this condition.[3]

[Unfortunately, this directive has remained only on paper.]

Of course, implementing this decision would only be the first step on the long road to improving the government school system in the country. Along with this, the government would need to substantially hike its education expenditure, replace para-teachers with regular trained teachers and improve school infrastructure. But the most crucial step to qualitatively improving the government school system is that everyone, the rich and the poor alike, must send their children to the same schools.

What we have described above is known as the common school system.

The Common School System

The establishment of common schools in all localities in the country had been recommended way back in 1966 by the Kothari Education Commission. A common school is a school where all children living in a locality—irrespective of class, caste, religious or linguistic background—study together in the same school situated in their neighbourhood.

All developed countries have provided free, compulsory and good quality education to all their children through the common school system. As the Kothari Commission had argued,

The establishment of such schools will compel rich, privileged and powerful classes to take an interest in the system of public education and thereby bring about its early improvement (Section 10.19).[4]

The truth of these observations is evident from the example mentioned above. As soon as the Collector of Erode admitted his daughter to the neighbourhood Panchayat Union school, the local officials took immediate action to ensure that the school had all basic facilities in place.

Essential Features of the Common School System

If India is to genuinely provide free, compulsory, equitable and good quality education to all children, it can only be done through establishing a publicly funded common school system as recommended by the Kothari Commission. And as we show in the next chapter, the country today definitely has enough financial resources to provide genuinely free education to all children up to Class 12.

Such a common school system would need to have the following essential features:

• Neighbourhood schools for all: All schools, including private schools, must become neighbourhood schools; the government will specify the neighbourhood for each school, and the school will compulsorily have to admit all children in its defined neighbourhood.
• Genuinely free education: All schools, whether privately managed or government-run, will have to provide genuinely free education to all children. This includes free uniforms, textbooks, notebooks and all necessary educational aids like pencils, pens and geometry boxes. They will not be allowed to charge fees under guises such as library fees, laboratory fees, computer fees and exam fees—all these facilities must be provided to students free.
• Support systems for vulnerable children: Providing compulsory education for all children also requires that the country abolish child labour, and provide suitable facilities such as residential schools for children of migrant labour.
• Uniform norms and standards: The government must define common minimum norms and standards for both government and private schools. These should cover aspects like school land; number, size and design of classrooms; drinking water and toilets; mid-day meals; playgrounds; performing and fine arts facilities; library; laboratories; computers; number of teachers; teacher qualifications; teacher salaries; pupil–teacher ratio; and other essential elements. The system of contract teachers will have to be abolished and the government will need to increase its funding for teacher education.
• Increased government spending: Implementing all this will require the government to significantly increase its spending on education.
• Decentralised curriculum and management: Schools must respond to local conditions while deciding curriculum, methods of teaching, teaching aids and related materials. In a country like India with so much linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, this is a must. For this to be possible, schools will have to be managed in a decentralised way—only then will it be possible for schools to respond to local conditions. Of course, this decentralisation will have to be within an overall common curriculum framework evolved by the government.

Lessons from the World’s Best Performing School Systems

Just implementing ‘neighbourhood schools’ will not be enough to improve the quality of government schools. Several studies of the world’s best-performing school systems—such as those of Australia, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and South Korea—point out that the most important factor behind their excellence is the quality of their teachers and the high standard of instruction provided in schools. All these high-performing systems in general have the following features:

• The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers: They attract capable individuals into the teaching profession through effective selection processes and offer them good salaries.
• The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction: They put in a lot of effort to develop these people into effective teachers and select the best among them to become principals.
• They monitor school performance and support students who fall behind: They put in place strong systems to monitor school performance and intervene when expectations are not met. They also keep a tab on students falling behind and provide targeted support to help them improve.[5]

This is so very different from what happens in our schools—where only those unable to get good jobs elsewhere enter the teaching profession; where ill-trained young people are appointed as contract teachers on low salaries; where the school inspection system exists only in name, with officials showing little concern for instructional quality; and where children who fall behind are failed and eventually pushed out of school.

All this can be changed. But for that, the government must hugely increase its expenditure on education, so that:

1. Infrastructure and facilities in all schools are improved to at least the level of Kendriya Vidyalayas.
2. Well-trained and regular teachers on decent salaries are appointed in all schools—only if decent salaries are given and job security is assured will capable and motivated young people be attracted to the teaching profession.

But the government claims that its social sector expenditures are already very high and that it cannot afford to spend more money on education. Is this indeed true? Does the government really not have the money? We examine this claim in the next chapter.

Notes

1. UDISE + Report 2023–24, op. cit.
2. Anil Sadgopal, “Neoliberal Act”, op. cit.; Gopu Mohan, “In Tamil Nadu Govt School Where Poor Kids Go, a New Face: The Collector’s Daughter”, 19 June 2011, http://archive.indianexpress.com; “Collector Admits Daughter to Panchayat School”, 19 June 2011, http://www.ndtv.com.
3. Madhu Prasad, “Public Education in the Marketplace”, Frontline, 8 July 2016, http://www.frontline.in.
4. Report of the Education Commission 1964–66, op. cit., p. 257.
5. “How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top”, September 2007, http://mckinseyonsociety.com; “What We Can Learn from Finland’s Successful School Reform”, http://www.nea.org.

[Neeraj Jain is a social activist and writer. He is the convenor of Lokayat, an activist group based in Pune. He is also the editor of Janata Weekly, India’s oldest socialist magazine. He has authored several books, including Globalisation or Recolonisation?, Education Under Globalisation: Burial of the Constitutional Dream, Nuclear Energy: Technology from Hell, and most recently, Union Budgets 2014-24: An Analysis.]