JNVs:
Rajiv Gandhi’s most valuable legacy
There is widespread apprehension whether the budgetary provision and education cess mandated by the United Progressive Alliance government will be prudently expended. Sceptics are likely to be encouraged by the news that a template for the delivery of quality rural school education exists in the path-breaking Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas conceptualised by the late Rajiv Gandhi. Neeta Lal reports  |
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The newly elected Congress-led UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government’s pledge to raise the national outlay for education to 6 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) to provide "good quality basic education including a nutritious mid-day meal" to all children between the ages of six-14 has been widely welcomed by the academic community, and society in general. To initiate this process, the Union budget presented to Parliament on July 8, imposes a 2 percent cess on all Central taxes with the promise that the proceeds of this levy (estimated at Rs.5,000 crore per year) will be canalised into the Union human resource development ministry for downstream deployment.However given the dismal record of the Central — and particularly state — governments in efficient deployment of budgetary allocations within an education system in which teachers play truant and infrastructure development funds mysteriously disappear, there is widespread apprehension within Indian academia and beyond whether the budgetary provision and the cess amount will be prudently expended for the stated purpose. Such sceptics are likely to be encouraged by the news that a template for delivery of quality secondary education to rural children exists and is working smoothly.
Initiated in 1984 and perhaps the most valuable endowment of the late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (1944-91) and the then Union HRD minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to the nation, top-grade residential Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (class VI- XII) schools were proposed to be constructed in every one of the 524 administrative districts of the country to provide free urban-standard (CBSE-affiliated) education to children of the rural poor.
The first two experimental schools were constructed in 1985 — in Amravati (Maharashtra) and Jhajihar (Haryana). Encouraged by the enthusiastic response to this rural education initiative, the Seventh Plan (1987-1992) formalised the promotion of at least one Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in each of the country’s rural districts. The objective of this enlightened initiative was not only to give the brightest rural children access to quality education but also to foster national integration coupled with social justice and equity and to pioneer bench-mark education institutions in rural India.
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| Singh: benchmark institutions |
"The broad aim for the establishment of JNVs was to provide quality modern education to meritorious rural children. The holistic education the JNVs offer includes a strong component of culture, inculcation of values, environment awareness, adventure activities and sports education. Essentially the JNVs are benchmark institutions for government, especially rural schools," says O.N. Singh the Delhi-based commissioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) which supervises the operations of 506 JNVs across the country providing high quality urban-standard secondary education to 140,792 hand-picked merit students of whom 49,980 are girls and 40 percent are from scheduled castes and tribes.
Certainly in terms of academic achievement the nation’s 506 JNVs constructed at an aggregate cost of Rs.1,793 crore have justified the faith reposed in them. According to the annual report (2002-03) of the governing Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 which is a constituent unit of the Union HRD ministry, in the CBSE class X all-India school-leaving exam, 88.5 percent of the 19,816 JNV students who wrote it passed, against the all India average of 68.2 percent. In the class XII school-leaving exam as well, 88.5 percent JNV students passed against the all-India average of 73.3. Perhaps more significantly, nearly 40 percent of JNV students managed to average over 60 percent in the two school-leaving exams whereas in most CBSE-affiliated government schools (excluding the Kendriya Vidyalayas) more than 10 percent of students averaging 60 percent plus is a rarity.
It has however to be admitted that the better academic performance of JNVs compared to run-of-the-mill government schools is because admissions into them are merit-based and only the brightest and best rural and small-town students are enrolled for high quality, no-cost secondary education as per the vigorous syllabus mandated by the highly-rated CBSE — India’s largest (7,050 affiliations) national school examinations board. According to a study conducted by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, 18 students compete for each JNV seat. "This annual rush for admission and rigorous selection is a prime factor for the success of these schools," says Nita Bali, vice principal of the Apeejay School, Noida. "It is also an indicator of the faith of rural parents in the JNVs admission system." (see box p. 28)
The good academic record of the JNVs is highlighted by the fact that it betters the performance of the pampered 926 Kendriya Vidyalaya schools administered by the HRD ministry and promoted since the early 1950s, mainly to provide quality secondary education (CBSE) to the children of Central government employees posted in transferable jobs across the country. "What is most remarkable about JNV schools is that they are highly individualistic institutions which have preserved their identity unlike government schools in general which seem rudderless and have been reduced to nondescript, mediocre status. But it’s important also to bear in mind that as against around 500,000 government and municipal schools in India, there are only 506 JNVs. So it’s easier to manage and showcase them," says R. Govinda professor at the National Institute for Educational Planning Administration (NIEPA), Delhi.
Box 1
JNVs: administration and admission
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ndia’s 506 cbse-affiliated Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) are run by the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS), an autonomous organisation under the ministry of human resource development’s department of secondary and higher education. The chairman of the samiti is the Union HRD minister. The samiti functions through an executive committee which is responsible for the administration and disbursal of funds to the JNVs. The executive committee is assisted by the finance and academic advisory committees. The executive head of the administrative pyramid is the commissioner assisted by joint, deputy and assistant directors. The samiti has established eight regional offices — Bhopal, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Patna, Pune and Shillong for the administration and monitoring of JNVs under their jurisdiction. For each JNV there is an academic advisory committee and a management committee for every school’s general supervision.
Admission.
The JNVs draw 77 percent of their students from rural India, on the basis of the merit JNV Selection Test (JNVST), designed, developed and conducted initially by the NCERT (National Council of Education Research & Training) and now by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) — India’s largest all-India school-leaving examinations board. The test is held annually on a pan-India basis at the block and district levels. JNVST is objective, non-verbal, class neutral and is designed to ensure that rural children are not at a disadvantage. The test can be written in any one of 20 Indian languages. All children who have studied and passed the class V exam of any recognised school and between five-13 years of age are eligible to apply. The JNVST test consists of three objective type question papers — mental ability (60 marks), maths (20) and language (20). Admission is primarily for children from rural areas with a 75 percent seat reservation for children of scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities in proportion to their population in their district of residence. A third of the seats are for girl students and 3 percent of seats are reserved for disabled children. The JNVs, which provide free tuition to all students are co-educational residential schools which also provide free board and lodging, uniforms, textbooks, stationery and even to and fro rail and bus fares.
Govinda ascribes the consistently improving academic scorecard of the JNVs to the administrative Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti’s preservation of its autonomy. "Teachers are recruited in a transparent manner based on merit and seniority. They are clear about where they’ll be posted and are in sync with the larger aims and objectives of the JNVs, unlike the situation in government schools where ambiguity and irrational transfers have played havoc with the system," explains Govinda.
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| Mahesh Kumar |
Operational autonomy has not only created a valuable pool of committed teachers, it has enabled the managements of JNV schools to maintain enviably low teacher pupil ratios. According to the annual report (1999) of the department of education, while the all-India teacher-pupil ratio for classes eight-XII is 1:25 (government and private schools), in JNVs it averages 1:15. Comments Mahesh Kumar, son of a bus conductor, a class X topper (91.8 percent) of the CBSE exam this year and student of JNV, Mungeshpur, south west of Delhi: "This favourable teacher-pupil ratio was perhaps the main contributing factor towards my academic success. Teachers are accessible round-the-clock to answer queries and clarify doubts. They pay attention to all our problems, no matter how small. This encourages us to approach them for help as often as we want. All this helps to improve academic performance."
In sharp contrast to state and local government schools where teacher truancy is a major problem, the teachers’ community within the JNVs is deeply committed, though not entirely enthusiastic about their on-call status within these residential schools. "Being a JNV teacher is a 24-hour job," says P.N. Sachan, principal, JNV Sonikpur, near Lucknow which has 427 students and 27 teachers on its rolls. "Teachers are on their feet from early morning until late at night. Their workload is compounded by the fact that there are no class-IV employees in our school."
However despite these problems Sachan has managed the enviable feat of achieving a 97 percent pass percentage for JNV Sonkipur (estb. 1992). He attributes this achievement to the strong JNV culture which stresses the holistic development of students as enshrined in the JNV charter which emphasises "a strong component of culture, inculcation of values, awareness of the environment, adventure activities and physical education for the students".
The aims and objectives of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti as enshrined in its charter inspires other principals as well. "We follow our charter in letter and spirit," explains Prit Singh, principal of JNV, Mungeshpur for the past decade. The school, which admitted its first students in 1988, currently has 450 students and 25 faculty members on its muster and an annual budget of Rs.80 lakh. "Undoubtedly, study at a JNV helps in personality development, instilling discipline and nurturing good habits. Overall, a JNV school education widens the opportunities available to students both in terms of further education and employment," adds Singh.
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| Foreign visitors at JNV Mungeshpur |
Surprisingly — and refreshingly — despite the 506 JNVs spread across the country being wholly funded by the (Union) government, they don’t suffer the chronic funds deprivation which is the lot of the overwhelming majority of government schools. All of them boast well-developed infrastructure facilties and a generous annual expenditure budget of Rs.1 crore per school. With government ready to acquire land in rural areas, they tend to be sited on sprawling 30-acre plus campuses and are equipped with modern amenities which compare with facilities available in second-rung private schools. For instance JNV, Sonikpur (UP), constructed on a 32-acre slice of prime real estate, boasts a 5,000-volume library, three well-equipped science labs, a computer room with seven personal computers, arts and music rooms furbished with numerous musical instruments and a huge playground with well-maintained courts for handball, basketball and volleyball — facilities inconceivable in rural schools.
Even the relatively ‘small’
(17-acre) JNV, Doddaballapur near Bangalore is equipped with a geography lab, three science labs, a library with over 8,000 volumes and 25 magazine subscriptions, apart from a multi-purpose auditorium for cultural activities. Recently, a VSAT-powered computer centre with seven Pentium workstations has been added to its facilitative infrastructure. "Sports facilities at our school include separate playing fields for cricket, football, and courts for basketball, volleyball and shuttle badminton," says H.S. Chalageri, principal of JNV, Doddaballapur.Last month, JNV, Mungeshpur added an LCD projector to its exclusive computer lab for teachers, all of whom are web-savvy and fully conversant with PowerPoint software. Ditto JNV, Ghaziabad (estb. 1988) which plans regular infrastructural upgrades and recently embellished its well-endowed library (14,000 books and 20 magazine subscriptions) with another 100 titles.
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| P.N. Sachan |
Likewise, JNV, Sangli (Maharashtra) boasts a gymnasium with equipment worth Rs.50,000, a library with more than 4,000 books and a large playground with well-equipped sports facilities. Not surprisingly, 31 students from the school have participated in competitive games at the regional level and 27 at the national level. Comments Balasubramanya, principal of JNV, Sangli: "We also offer extra-curricular activities such as drama, music and elocution, and organise dental camps, polio immunisation rallies and computer literacy programmes among neigbourhood schools."
"The establishment of over 500 JNVs across the country and the enthusiastic response of rural children proves that good quality education and a progressive school environment isn’t the prerogative of elite public schools," opines Ambarish Rai, national convenor of National Alliance for the Fundamental Right to Education (NAFRE). "Government-managed schools can deliver quality education as well provided they are nurtured and given operational freedom. Twenty years after they were promoted amidst great scepticism, the JNVs are a shining example to private schools which charge stupendous fees for comparable quality education."
Given the operational freedom they enjoy, JNV teachers are receptive to classroom and institutional innovations. Particularly noteworthy is the migration programme under which 30 percent of class IX students of every school transfer for 12 months to a JNV in another state. "The migration scheme not only makes children self-reliant but also promotes national integration and provides actual experience of the diversity of India’s plural culture," says B.R.Goswami, principal of JNV, Ghaziabad which has 461 students and 19 teachers. The scheme began modestly in 1988 with an exchange of 31 students between two schools, and has been adopted as official policy. Last year 6,909 class IX students attended class in JNVs in different states in a successful exchange programme.
Yet despite the pioneer and all too few JNVs offering a small percentage of merit students in rural India school education opportunities which are a distant dream for the overwhelming majority of children across the country, such is the scale of deprivation and distress in the rural hinterland that even the JNVs which provide free-of-cost CBSE education are afflicted by the school drop-outs problem which is a defining characteristic of Indian education. Of the estimated 112 million children who enroll in primary schools across the country every year, only 42 million make it to middle school (class VIII).
According to a report of a review committee of the Union HRD ministry, in the JNVs, the drop-out percentage in classes VI-VIII and IX-X is 11.2 and 16.6 percent respectively. At the Plus Two stage in classes XI-XII the drop-out average for the 506 JNVs is 22 percent.
"Many students are simply unable to adjust to our routines. They feel homesick and want to leave. Another important reason is that some children find the CBSE English medium syllabus much tougher and more difficult to cope with than the state board syllabus which they have followed until class V. And inevitably some senior students are obliged to quit to work and augment family incomes because poverty in rural India is pervasive," says Goswami.
Though modest in comparison with the high attrition rates which characterise the government school system across the country, the high (compared to CBSE affiliated schools in general) drop-out percentages dismay HRD ministry and JNV faculty in particular. Increased intake and lateral entry against vacancies into JNV classrooms is being considered as a solution to ensure that the investment in infrastructure and facilities is fully utilised.
"The governing Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti should increase admissions in class VI so that even if students drop out progressively, a sufficient number stay the course until class XII to allow an optimum utilisation of the large investment made in the JNVs. Another option is to admit students into all classes against drop-out vacancies. But this is a limited option as a sudden switch to the CBSE syllabus is likely to create learning and adjustment difficulties," says an HRD ministry official.
Disturbing drop-out percentages apart, there is considerable debate within the governing samiti and JNVs about the cost-benefits of these (relatively) capital-intensive government schools which siphon over Rs.500 crore annually out of the Union HRD ministry’s Rs.11,062 crore budget. Moreover critics of the elitist JNV model allege that the free education which rural students derive is utilised in the main as a passport to employment in urban India.
According to an NVS status review report, a majority of (71 percent) JNV alumni enroll for mainstream arts, commerce and science degrees. In 1997-98 (the latest statistic available) 14 percent enrolled for MBBS or B.Tech study programmes; 39 percent are employed in the private sector; 17 percent in government service and 14 percent in public sector enterprises. Only a tenth of JNV graduates return to the land with the overall urban-rural ratio being 4:1.
But U.C. Bajpai deputy director of NVS, is of the opinion that such job analyses is an exercise of limited utility because even if a majority of JNV students work in urban India, benefits flow to the rural sector since most of them retain links with their villages."Whether a JNV student pursues higher studies, gets a private sector job or becomes an agriculturist, the benefits of his/ her education flow into rural India because most students tend to retain their rural linkages. Good quality schooling enables them to pursue further studies and improves job opportunities which increases the flow of rural remittances. These linkages can be strengthened further with decentralisation of the administration of JNVs," says Bajpai.
The ‘decentralisation’ debate within the JNVs is perhaps as old as these trail-blazing schools themselves. Recurrently, the question whether state-centre coordination will improve if the samiti is divided into regional samitis is raised. The underlying basis for the suggestion is that regional samitis will be able to provide better administration and devise ‘context-specific’ curriculums. But a review committee set up by the HRD ministry in 2001 to study the JNV experiment warned that decentralisation and local curricula are "against the spirit of JNVs, which were set up to promote a national identity".
"One of the important
objectives of JNVs — as also of the Kendriya Vidyalayas — is national uniformity so that students of these schools can relocate to different parts of the country and still be assured of getting the same quality education. Decentralisation will reduce the autonomy of JNVs and dilute the powers of principals of these schools, which have been successful because they enjoy an unusual degree of autonomy within the government school system," says Mamta Sharma deputy principal of JNV Mungeshpur (Delhi).Quite evidently whether judged in terms of pass percentages in the CBSE’s school leaving (class X and XII) exams, the delivery of well-rounded holistic education, easy entry into institutions of higher education or beneficial impact upon small town and rural economies, the late Rajiv Gandhi’s JNV school experiment has been an unqualified success. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the first JNV, these nationally benchmarked CBSE affiliated schools are conspicuous landmarks on the bleak rural education landscape devastated by half a century of neglect.
Box 2
"We urgently need to increase the number of JNVs"
O.N. Singh has recently taken charge as commisssioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti. An alumnus of St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, Singh who also has a Masters in development education from the Asian Institute of Management, Manila, Philippines, was hitherto a director in the Union HRD ministry. Excerpts from an interview:
Against its targets and objectives, how successful do you think the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas have been?
The JNVs started out with the main objectives of raising rural education standards, fostering national integration and providing opportunities to bright and talented children of the rural poor. We’ve managed to attain a high rate of success in all these areas but we still have a long way to go. First, we urgently need to increase the number of JNVs from the current 506; it’s just not enough to have only one JNV per rural district. We need more money for construction of more JNVs to meet the growing demand for education in rural India. Hopefully, the current government’s Union budget 2004-05 which has raised the government’s annual outlay for education will address that need.
What is your budget for the JNVs?
Our total expenditure is Rs.562 crore per year, of which the plan or capital expenditure budget is Rs.150 crore.
To what extent have the JNVs helped to raise rural education standards in general?
Since the JNVs were set up as model schools and pace setters in the field of education in rural districts, I think we’ve achieved a fair measure of success. Our academic results show improvement every year; JNV students are qualifying for admission into the IITs and medical schools and some are even going abroad for higher studies. Many JNVs, especially those in Andhra Pradesh have been consistently achieving 100 percent pass averages. All this augurs well for rural education. Also, the JNV culture and our migration scheme, under which a number of our students exchange places with another JNV, has helped nurture self-reliant, independent and confident students who can compete with urban students on an equal footing.
Moreover apart from providing quality education to improve the quality of rural life, these schools also benefit the local community indirectly. For instance, we have designed projects which require our students to educate villagers about health issues — pulse polio campaigns, the importance of hygiene etc — and importance of nurturing the environment. Our schools also share their medical and infrastructure facilities such as computer labs, playgrounds with local government schools not endowed with them. This synergy is beneficial for the entire district.
Are you satisfied with the JNVs’ contribution towards raising farm productivity and development of agro-industry?
It is too early to gauge the impact of JNVs on the development of agro-industry as almost all our students are first-generation learners. No extensive research has been done in this area. But one can say with a certain degree of confidence that since we began providing quality education to the rural poor, there is improved general awareness and knowledge about science and agriculture. A large number of our students go back to their villages and implement what they have learnt in the classrooms. It’s a natural fallout of pedagogy.
Therefore this unique initiative to deliver quality school education and re-energise rural India needs to be consolidated, expanded and dovetailed into the Union government’s
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan or Education for All programme. Consolidation is an urgent necessity because despite the hype and hoopla about them, 98 JNVs continue to be housed in temporary accommodation; there are serious disciplinary problems which resulted in 56 on-campus deaths in the past three years; and many schools don’t have assured water supply and suffer other infrastructure deficiencies.
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| JNV Chittogarh students in library |
"Modernisation, upgradation and development are our priorities. My main focus will be on pushing for the construction of more JNVs, especially in the remote tribal and schedule caste regions of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and the North-east. Moreover, academically some states and regions are doing better than the others which have lagged behind. We need to analyse the reasons for this and improve non-performing schools. Also, we need to upgrade the infra-structure of existing JNVs by providing contemporary science and computer labs, better libraries and improving the quality of food," says O.N. Singh, commissioner of the Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti.
Quite obviously the late Rajiv Gandhi’s commendable initiative to upgrade the rock-bottom standards of school education in rural India by promoting the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas has paid off handsomely. During the two decades past, these pioneer institutions have established themselves as beacons of hope and benchmark institutions offering 140,792 rural children a good chance to break out of the poor education-low productivity-poverty vicious circle. A study of the professional background of parents and students in JNVs conducted by IIM Ahmedabad indicates that more than half the students are in a position to pay modest tuition fees to their schools. With the per student HRD ministry allocation of Rs.6,500 per annum proving inadequate, means tested tuition fees could perhaps be introduced to improve their finances and infrastructure.
But given that the number of children in rural India who deserve JNV quality education is almost 80 million, the provenly successful JNV experiment needs to be scaled up. Currently the HRD ministry and Union government has fallen behind its target of establishing one JNV in every district in the country (524). With the newly sworn-in UPA government in Delhi having made "good quality basic education" and rural development its top priorities, not only must it make good this shortfall, it needs to set its sights on doubling the current number across the country (506) within the next five years. Though this will not banish the shocking rural poverty and under-development which is a dismaying feature of half a century of centrally planned economic development, setting this target will send out a clear message that the government’s rural development priority is not a mere statement of pious intent.
With Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore); Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) & Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)