Under this model, rapidly expanding in the US, government transfers the management of its schools to proven education NGOs and/or private educationists, paying them the per student cost incurred by it

EVERYBODY WHO KNOWS THE first thing about the near-collapsed Indian education system, knows that its deadweight — which has dragged not only post-independence India’s education superstructure, but also the country’s economy to the depths — is the country’s 1.2 million mainly state government primary (class I-VIII) schools. Defined by decrepit buildings with leaking roofs, rickety if any, furniture, multi-grade teaching in single classrooms (20 percent), and lack of toilet facilities (13 percent) with over 20 percent unable to provide separate toilets for girl children, ill-conceived, outdated syllabuses and curriculums and 25 percent (1 million) teachers absent every day, India’s government primaries which have an estimated 140 million children on their tattered muster-rolls, are a national disgrace.

Ramshackle infrastructure facilities in government primaries are made worse by severely deficient learning outcomes. According to the authoritative Annual Status of Education Report 2013 covering rural primaries published by the highly-respected Mumbai-based NGO Pratham (estb.1994) early this year, nationally, the proportion of all children in class V who can read and comprehend a class II level text is a mere 47 percent. “This proportion decreased each year from 2009 to 2012, dropping from 52 percent in 2009 to 46.9 percent in 2012. Among class V children enrolled in government schools, the percentage of children able to read class II level texts decreased from 50.3 percent (2009) to 43.8 percent (2011) to 41.1 (2013),” comment the authors of ASER 2013. In sum, against the backdrop of the ill-formulated Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 which became operational in 2010 and mandated that no child in primary school is obliged to repeat a year in the same class, i.e, automatically promoted, learning outcomes in primary education dominated by government schools, are continuously falling.

And if literacy outcomes in government primaries are depressing, numeracy education is even more so. “In 2010, 33.2 percent of children of class III in government schools could at least do subtraction, as compared to 47.8 percent in private schools. The gap between children in government and private schools has widened over time. In 2013, 18.9 percent of class III students in government schools were able to do basic subtraction or more, as compared to 44.6 percent of class III children in private schools,” reveals ASER 2013 in a damning indictment of teaching-learning standards in primary education, and government schools in particular. Little wonder 53 percent of children drop out of school before completing primary/elementary (up to class VIII) education.

Yet typically, instead of appreciating the massive voluntary effort — 25,000 volunteers testing 700,000 children in the age group 3-16 in the country’s rural outbacks — and learning from it, the Central government’s National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) conducts its own survey which presents a diametrically opposite picture described by Pratham’s CEO Madhav Chavan as “unacceptable” and “bordering even on misleading the house (Parliament) on facts”.

“By NCERT’s own statement in the report published in 2012, its results are not comparable with previous surveys. However, they seem to have somehow come up with results that show improvement. We find it interesting that in this latest survey, Uttar Pradesh government schools have scored the highest in the country by a wide margin, using what NCERT claims to be ‘rigorous’ and ‘detailed’ methods as compared to ASER’s. The unwillingness to admit that there is a problem is not helpful. The problem won’t go away. It will only get worse,” writes Chavan in an essay included in ASER 2013.

Unlike the ASER survey which uses class I texts to test class III students, NCERT’s National Achievement Survey (NAS) 2012 conducted in 34 states, covering 7,046 schools and 104,000 students in urban and rural India, tested class III students in government and government aided schools with “class-specific questions”. Its conclusion: “Overall, class III children in 34 states/UTs were able to answer 64 percentage  of language items correctly and  66 percent of mathematics questions correctly.”

Ex facie, given that infrastructural deficiencies and teacher attendance problems are more acute in government schools, the picture painted by NAS is too rosy. Moreover, the reality that NCERT is funded by the Union HRD ministry which has a vested interest in presenting a positive picture of the progress of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (elementary education for all) programme, raises a credibility problem. But even so, the NAS conclusion that over one-third of children in government primaries are deficient in language and maths learning, is cause for alarm rather than complacency.

The antidote for poor learning outcomes in government primaries is obvious and has been staring the Central and state governments — as also the indifferent public — in the face for several decades: charter schools. Under this model rapidly expanding in the US and Scandinavia, government transfers management of its schools to proven education NGOs and/or private educationists, paying them the per student cost incurred by it. An agreement or charter spells out terms and conditions permitting a supervisory role to government with negotiated outcome commitments to be fulfilled by the transferee/lessee.

But the road-block preventing professionally-qualified and proven educators and educationists from raising teaching-learning standards through the proliferation of aided and charter schools, is corruption which is as endemic to education as to other sectors of the over-regulated Indian economy. Over the past six decades, the country’s huge tribe of corrupt politicians and cynical bureaucrats have acquired a deeply vested interest in the status quo in education. Vast fortunes can — and are being — made through the award of government school construction contracts, teacher recruitment, appointment and transfer scams with little fear of  weak law and order and weary justice systems.

If the newly-inducted Modi sarkar at the Centre is serious about reforming Indian education, it will not only have to fulfill its pre-election promise of raising the national outlay for education to 6 percent of GDP, it will also have to persuade state governments to grasp the nettle of transforming dysfunctional government schools into charter schools. But in the Indian context these are tall orders.