India Infrastructure Report 2012

Private Sector in Education

Idfc Foundation

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781134952656
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Wirtschaftstheorie

Today, India's education sector remains a victim of poor policies, restrictive regulations and orthodoxy. Despite being enrolled in schools, children are not learning adequately. Increasingly, parents are seeking alternatives through private inputs in school and tuition. Students are dropping out from secondary school in spite of high financial returns of secondary education, and those who do complete it have inferior conceptual knowledge. Higher education is over-regulated and under-governed, keeping away serious private providers and reputed global institutes. Graduates from high schools, colleges and universities are not readily employable, and few are willing to pay for skill development. Ironically, the Right to Education Act, if strictly enforced, will result in closure of thousands of non-state schools, and millions of poor children will be left without access to education.

Eleventh in the series, India Infrastructure Report 2012 discusses challenges in the education sector — elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational — and explores strategies for constructive change and opportunities for the private sector. It suggests that immediate steps are required to reform the sector to reap the benefits from India's 'demographic dividend' due to a rise in the working age population.

Result of a collective effort led by the IDFC Foundation, this Report brings together a range of perspectives from academics, researchers and practitioners committed to enhancing educational practices. It will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, researchers and corporates.

Section II

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

3 Right of Children to Free and Compulsory
Education Act, 2009 and its Implementation

Chanchal Chand Sarkar*

The positive role of Universal Elementary Education (UEE) in strengthening the socio-economic base of a nation cannot be over-emphasised. Recognising the importance of it, the original Article 45 in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution mandated the State to endeavour to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to age 14 within a period of 10 years. The National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986/92, states:

In our national perception, education is essentially for all … Education has an acculturating role. It refines sensitivities and perceptions that contribute to national cohesion, a scientific temper and independence of mind and spirit — thus furthering the goals of socialism, secularism and democracy enshrined in our Constitution.

Via the 86^th Constitutional Amendment, a new Article 21A was added in Part I of the Constitution of India to make free and compulsory elementary education a fundamental right for children. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (or RTE) came into force in India with effect from 1 April 2010 (GoI 2009).

Even before the RTE came into force, the Government of India’s (GoI’s) efforts were towards universalisation of elementary education in the country. This paper describes the stages through which the RTE Act has come into effect and how, in the course of implementing the RTE Act, the existing system has been changed and aligned with a view to fulfil its objectives. It also discusses how various other important schemes of the central and state governments play a crucial role in achieving the objectives of the RTE. Further, the actual implementation of the RTE-Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and its impact is presented. The concluding section of the chapter deliberates on future needs.

EVOLUTION OF THE RTE AND SSA

As a follow up to the NPE, a number of programmes were initiated in India with a view to achieving UEE. These ef orts were intensified in the 1980s and 1990s through several interventions such as Operation Blackboard (OBB), the Shiksha Karmi Project (SKP), the Andhra Pradesh Primary Education Project (APPEP), the Bihar Education Project (BEP), the UP Basic Education Project (UPBEP), Mahila Samakhya (MS), the Lok Jumbish Project (LJP), and Teacher Education, which put in place a decentralised system of teacher support through District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) and the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP). The latest is the SSA, a centrally-sponsored scheme implemented in partnership with state governments for the UEE across the country.

Due to these initiatives, over the years there has been significant spatial and numerical expansion of elementary schools in the country. Today, access and enrolment at the primary stage of education have reached very close to universal levels. The number of out-of-school children at the elementary level has reduced significantly. The gender gap in elementary education has narrowed and the percentage of enrolled children belonging to scheduled castes and tribes has increased successively. Despite this, the goal of universal elementary education is yet to be achieved in the country. There remains the unfinished agenda of universal education at the upper primary stage. The number of children — particularly those from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections — who drop out of school before completing upper primary education remains high. The quality of learning achievement is not always entirely satisfactory even in the case of children who complete elementary education. With a view to address these issues, the RTE has been introduced to directly counter the problems of illiteracy, poor quality infrastructure and learning level in the elementary education sector. However, the road to the RTE Act has not been easy. The exercise of consulting all stakeholders including the states and taking them on board has been time-consuming.

The main provisions in the RTE Act include the responsibilities of appropriate government and local authorities towards establishing neighbourhood schools; sharing of financial and other responsibilities between the central and state governments; prohibition of capitation fee and screening procedure for admission; prohibition of detention, expulsion and corporal punishment; specification of norms and standards for schools including those related to the infrastructure and teachers; laying down of teacher qualifications and their duties; prohibition of deployment of teachers for non-educational purposes; and ensuring that curriculum and evaluation is in accordance with the Constitution of India and as per child-centred principles and values. Children with disabilities and those belonging to minority communities are also covered under the Act.

As per the RTE Act, 2009, every child has the right to full-time elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school that satisfies certain essential norms and standards. The need to address inadequacies in retention, residual access, particularly of un-reached children, and the questions of quality are the most compelling reasons for the addition of Article 21A in the Constitution of India.

As has already been stated, even prior to the RTE, the GoI’s efforts were towards universalisation of elementary education in the country. The SSA was the most prominent among all efforts initiated by the GoI before 2010 and was approved by the union cabinet in November 2000 as a centrally-sponsored scheme. The goals of the SSA are (a) enrolment of all children in schools, Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) centres, alternate schools, ‘back-to-school’ camps, (b) retention of all children till the upper primary stage, (c) bridging of gender and social category gaps in enrolment, retention and learning, and (d) ensuring significant enhancement in the learning achievement levels of children at the primary and upper primary stages.

There is little difference between the objectives of the RTE and those under the SSA. Yet, there are fundamental variations between the two. While the provisions under the SSA were not part of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution, the RTE provisions form an integral part. Under the RTE, ‘free education’ has been defined, and it states that no child, other than one who has been admitted by his or her parents to a school which is not supported by the appropriate government, shall be liable to pay any kind of fee or charges or expenses which may prevent him or her from pursuing and completing elementary education. ‘Compulsory education’ casts an obligation on the appropriate government and local authorities to provide and ensure admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children in the age group of 6–14 years. With this, India has moved forward to a rights-based framework under the RTE Act that casts a legal obligation on the central and state governments to implement this fundamental right.

The roadmap for universalising elementary education is derived from the definite timeframes mandated in the RTE Act; it prescribes a timeframe of three years for the establishment of neighbourhood schools, provision of school infrastructure with an all-weather building and basic facilities, and provision of teachers as per prescribed Pupil–Teacher Ratio (PTR) (30:1). Further, the RTE Act stipulates that all untrained teachers in the system must be trained within a period of five years from the date of enforcement of the Act. The rest of the provisions are required to be implemented with immediate effect.

The RTE Act has had considerable implications for the overall approach and implementation strategies of the SSA. With the enactment of the RTE, there was a need to review the interventions under the SSA and align its norms with the RTE mandate. Today, the SSA is the main implementation vehicle for the RTE Act, 2009: the Implementation Framework of the SSA has in fact been revised to coordinate with the provisions of the RTE Act. A comprehensive monitoring mechanism has also been put in place to ensure smooth implementation of the SSA.

The major changes in the SSA norms effected by the executive committee of the SSA in January 2010 are:

(a) School to be established/ensured within the limits of the neighbourhood as laid down by the state government pursuant to the RTE Act;

(b) All existing EGS centres that have been functioning for two years or more to be upgraded to regular schools, or closed down. No new EGS centres to be sanctioned from 2010–11 onwards;

(c) Special training to be carried out for age-appropriate enrolment of out-of-school and dropout children through residential and non-residential courses;

(d) School infrastructure norms to include libraries, including a one-time grant for books worth 20B9;3,000 for primary schools and ₹10,000 for upper primary schools;

(e) Ceiling on school repairs up to a maximum of 5 per cent of the existing schools for each district in a particular year, which inhibited the demand for repairs, removed;

(f) School grant to be utilised for play material and sports equipment, in addition to the existing provision for replacement of non-functional school equipment and other recurring costs such as consumables;

(g) Training norms to include training of resource persons, master trainers, and Block Resource Centre (BRC) and Cluster Resource Centre (CRC) coordinators for up to 10 days each year at ₹100 per person per day;

(h) Financial provisions for children with special needs increased from ₹1,200 to ₹3,000 per child per year, provided that at least ₹1,000 per child will be used for the engagement of resource teachers;

(i) Community mobilisation provisions strengthened by raising the number of training days for community personnel from two to six, comprising three-day residential and three-day non-residential training. Financial limits for training also hiked, from ₹30 to ₹100 per day per person for residential training and ₹50 per day per person for non-residential training;

(j) Management cost for districts with small annual plan and size increased from ₹2 million per district to ₹4 million subject to the overall ceiling of 6 per cent being maintained at the national level.

Further to the change in the SSA norms, the timeframes shown in Table 3.1, mandated by the RTE Act, become immediately applicable to the SSA:

TABLE 3.1 Activities and their Timeframes: Ministry of Human Reso...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables, Figures and Boxes
• List of Abbreviations
• Private Sector in Education: An Overview
• Section I Education Landscape in India
• Section II Elementary and Secondary Education
• Section III Higher and Vocational Education
• Section IV Role of Teacher Training and ICT in Education
• Section V Review of Infrastructure Sector in India
• Contributors