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The outcome of the anomalies and aberrations in implementation of education policies over the past six decades in post-independence India presents the most intriguing contrast in human development worldwide. Despite the constitutional mandate of 1950 to provide free and compulsory education to all children until they attain 14 years of age, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act) became law 60 years later on April 1, 2010. Moreover, it encompasses only the six-14 age group. Nevertheless, although belated, the RTE Act is welcome as it has aroused great expectations, particularly within the weaker, deprived and deficient segments of the population which have been continuously suffering neglect on almost every count, particularly primary education.
India’s neo-natal mortality rate of 33 per 1,000 consumed 862,000 children in 2010. Moreover an estimated 46 percent of children below age five suffer severe malnutrition despite the nation and government having known about it for decades. The impact of chronic malnutrition on preschool and primary children is painfully obvious, reflected in the abysmal learning outcomes of rural primaries. The nationwide mid-day meal scheme — trumpeted as the world’s largest — languishes because of faulty, unimag-inative and sluggish implem-entation by most state governments. Yet this dismal litany is only the tip of the huge subterranean mountain of depressing statistics relating to primary and upper primary education in India 65 years after independence.
Numbers and percentages aside, it’s common knowledge that only 25 percent of India’s 220 million school-going children receive elementary education of acceptable quality. The great majority are left to their fate in schools with innumerable deficiencies and deprivations, including lack of drinking water and toilets.
Those who rejoice in the reported clamour of multi-nationals to invest in India and this country’s impressive annual rate of GDP growth, would do well to ponder about factor productivity and annual rates of economic growth if 80-90 percent of the country’s children were receiving good quality education and effective skills development training. It would catalyse unimaginable transformation in every sector of the economy and India’s annual rate of GDP growth could be the envy of all nations.
In this connection, it’s a conundrum why non-bureaucratic reform options never attract the attention of governments at the Centre and in state capitals. Although the demographic advantage India has by way of the world’s largest child population has fired the imagination of several countries and belatedly even of New Delhi which has flashed the green signal to the National Skills Development Mission, obvious solutions to the intensifying shortage of teachers seem to bypass the Union government and Planning Commission.
Curiously, government and the education establishment seem to be oblivious to the ‘aged and retired but active and in good health’ segment of the country’s population. In every village, city and town, there’s a pool of retired teachers, defence personnel, government officials and others who are active, alert and willing to contribute their experience and expertise to teach children. In the circumstances, why should an elementary school remain non-functional due to lack of teachers with so many retirees ready, willing and able to step into the breach? Why shouldn’t headmasters/principals be authorised to invite experts available in the neighbourhood to teach, counsel and aid children the best they can to draw out their latent potential and intelligences?
Making government schools function effectively by utilising this readily available manpower for teaching, nurturing and/or helping out in elementary education could catalyse vast improvements in the quality of the nation’s human resource pool. But to attain this objective, innovative strategies for stakeholders and community cooperation have to be identified, devised and contextualised for diverse situations. By now it should be clear to all that throwing money at the problem and launching new schemes won’t result in improving learning outcomes in the nation’s 80 percent elementary schools which are dysfunctional and unproductive.
Restoring quality in teacher preparation, community involvement, reposing trust in headmasters/principals and empowering them to enlist public support for upgrading school infrastructure and pedagogies are the prerequisites of transformation of elementary education. There is no harm in making people aware that without stakeholder and community support, the Central and/or state governments can’t upgrade schools to deliver acceptable levels of quality education and skills acquisition.
Legislation of the RTE Act and its endorsement by the Supreme Court is indicative of a national consensus that quality education for all is the precondition of national development and to prepare an educated, skilled and self-confident workforce for the 21st century. But to discharge its grave responsibility to educate, upskill and empower the world’s largest child population to confront the formidable challenges of the 21st century, the Union HRD ministry must devise ways and means to embrace new ideas, consult and co-opt even radical thinkers.
(J.S. Rajput is former director NCERT and National Council for Teacher Education)