Ranked the third most educated state in India on the Education Development Index of the Delhi-based National University of Educational Planning and Administration, the southern state of Tamil Nadu (pop: 62.1 million) prides itself for providing easy access to education with officials claiming 99 percent enrollment in government primaries. Nevertheless, knowledgeable academics in Chennai are unimpressed, and say that a sizeable number of the 53,000 government schools in Tamil Nadu lack basic infrastructure facilities with the result that the quality of education provided to 15 million school-going children leaves a lot to be desired. In particular government schools in rural areas bear the brunt of government neglect and apathy.
Reacting to such criticism, last October the state government introduced a novel School Improvement Scheme (SIS), in which it invited private sector participation to upgrade government schools. Under the scheme, private companies can ‘adopt’ a school by signing a memorandum of understanding with the TN government’s school education department for a five-year period to implement projects in ten areas: land purchase; building and upgrading classrooms; constructing compound walls, playgrounds, libraries and laboratories; providing drinking water and toilet facilities; buying equipment for science and computer labs and sports activities; innovation in teaching and learning pedagogies and student welfare activities. The government has requested private companies, non-government organisations (NGOs), non-resident Indians (NRIs) and others to donate a minimum of Rs.300,000 per primary school, and Rs.500,000 per secondary school for investment in any of the listed areas.
According to education department sources, the initial response to the initiative is excellent. Many companies, NGOs and individuals particularly in Coimbatore, Namakkal and Erode districts of Tamil Nadu, have expressed interest. “Though many IT majors and other companies have already launched corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in education, they haven’t contributed much by way of physical infrastructure. We are hoping that the SIS initiative inviting more substantive participation in school education will elicit greater response from them. We want to involve them with school infrastructure development,” says Dr. P. Perumalsamy, director of school education, Tamil Nadu.
Somewhat belatedly, the ruling DMK government has become aware that it can’t make up for decades of neglect of government primary-secondaries on its own. According to the Tamil Nadu NGOs Report, jointly published by 200 child welfare NGOs in the state in September 2008, of the 53,000 government schools in the state, 1,663 don’t provide drinking water, 12,907 are without electricity, 13,808 are without toilets and 17,035 lack separate toilets for girl students. Moreover learning outcomes in government primaries are abysmal.
But although the state education department claims a good initial response to SIS, it is pertinent to note that companies involved in education-focused CSR initiatives, tend to be wary of involvement with infrastructure development projects. Instead, they prefer to be involved with technology-driven teacher and student training programmes to improve learning outcomes in schools. For instance Intel India under its Intel Teach Program provides information communication technologies (ICT) training to teachers to enable them to integrate technology into classrooms, and has thus far trained 45,000 teachers in the state and 1 million teachers countrywide.
Likewise, Microsoft India’s Project Shiksha, launched in 2003 and run in partnership with state governments, focuses on accelerating IT literacy of government school teachers and students.
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“We believe that our education initiatives must necessarily be connected with our business model. We use our core competency in technology to upgrade education systems and empower communities by equipping them with critical skills required in today’s knowledge economy. We don’t participate in school infrastructure development; it’s not our core area,” says R. Ravichandran, sales director (South Asia) of Intel.
This wary response to SIS is shared by industry in general. “The Tamil Nadu government will have to package this scheme carefully and allow continuous involvement of corporates with schools in which they build infrastructure. Unless partner companies are permitted to monitor construction and administration of facilities they endow in adopted schools, the initiative will be a non-starter. Because companies can not only lose their investment, but reputations as well,” says M.M. Venkatchellam, director of Chennai’s well-known Muragappa group of companies, expressing a typical reaction to the SIS initiative.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)