PANEL DISCUSSION

Should the RTE Act include preschool education?

This panel comprised five knowledgeable and pre-eminent ECCE (early childhood care and education) professionals from across India — Swati Popat Vats (SPV), founder-president of the Early Childhood Association of India; Lina Ashar (LA), founder-director of the Kangaroo Kids chain of 116 owned and franchised preschools and K-12 schools; Niranjanaradhya V.P. (NVP), programme head for Universalisation of School Education Programme at the Centre for Child and the Law of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore; Ambarish Rai (AR), national convenor of the RTE Forum, and Prriety Gosalia (PG), CEO of Leapbridge Education which runs a group of preschools in Pune and Mumbai — and was chaired by Dilip Thakore (DT), editor, EducationWorld. 

DT: The TSR Subramanian Committee Report on the new National Education Policy 2016, submitted to the Union HRD ministry last May, has recommended that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009, which makes it mandatory for the State to provide free and compulsory elementary education to every child between 6-14 years of age, should be extended to preschool education to cover children aged three-six years. What’s your reaction Swati?

SPV: My reaction is mixed. The Early Childhood Association believes that all children below six years have the right to quality early childhood care and education and the RTE Act must cover them as well. The latest ASER (Annual Status of Education Report 2016) published by the highly respected NGO, Pratham, highlights that the majority of class V children in rural India can’t read class II texts. Moreover, the last time a batch of selected students from India wrote PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) — an international objective test to assess the real learning outcomes of 15-year-olds of 74 countries — our students were ranked #73 or second last. This is because we have neglected ECCE. Education in India begins from age six onwards. If we don’t bring in early childhood education under the purview of the RTE Act and the National Education Policy, we will never improve our primary learning outcomes or PISA ranking.

However, I am not happy with the implementation of the RTE Act in school education. There is a big danger that the State will pass on its obligation of providing ECCE to private preschools just as it has done for primary education. And after it has done this, government interference in private preschools will increase. My advice to the government is to first fix the country’s 1.34 dysfunctional anganwadis before starting to regulate private preschools. 

DT: What do you think Prreity? Are you in favour of including preschool education in the RTE Act?

PG: Yes. I strongly believe the RTE Act should cover early childhood education. Preschool education is as much the fundamental right of children as primary education. Early years education is critical to preparing children for primary school and indeed all future learning. Unfortunately in our country, we have segregated young children based on their economic status with households who can afford it, receiving quality preschool education and those who cannot, making do with poor quality anganwadi education or none at all. To achieve the larger goal of providing ECCE to all children of India, government and private sector educators need to work together rather than against each other. 

LA: My issue with governments in India is that they react to issues rather than thinking carefully beforehand and preparing a plan for implementation. For instance, when there were media reports of some Tree House preschools shutting down, government suddenly resolved to regulate private preschools. I believe before deciding on a national ECCE policy, government should consult with ECCE experts and private preschool education providers. They need our expertise and knowledge to improve early childhood education delivery, rather than making the private sector allocate 25 percent of their capacity for poor children. 

Currently under the RTE Act, the government is not just paying for its own schools but also subsidising the education of the 25 percent of underprivileged children admitted in private schools, though the subsidy is nowhere close to the actual per student cost incurred by private schools. I fear the same will happen in ECCE with the government thrusting rules and reservations on private preschools, rather than taking us on board as partners.

DT: Ambarish, you are one of the strongest proponents of the RTE Act ab initio. Why was the cut-off age for free and compulsory education fixed at 6-14 years?

AR: We gathered 40,000 people in Delhi way back in 2001 to demand legislation of the fundamental right to education for preschool to higher secondary children. We also met then HRD minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi who promised that a constitutional amendment will be passed to guarantee children the right to education from preschool to 14 years. But when the 93rd Amendment was actually tabled in Parliament, they restricted this fundamental right to children between 6-14 years. Preschool education was excluded because, according to the government, it doesn’t have the financial resources to universalise ECCE.

Therefore, currently the 1.34 million anganwadis established under the Central government’s ICDS programme, are mere nutrition centres, with the education component almost nil. That’s why anganwadi children are completely unprepared for primary school. Unfortunately, the Central government is continually slashing its education expenditure, including the ICDS outlay. So it’s unclear how and when preschool education will be brought under the RTE Act.

DT: Niranjan, the RTE Act clearly mandates the State to provide elementary classes I-VIII education to all children. But the State has passed some of this burden to the private sector under s. 12 (1) (c) of the Act. How is this justified?

NVP: The more we talk about human rights, the more the State is abdicating its responsibilities. This is a major concern for all of us who believe that education is a social good and should not be commercialised or privatised. I strongly believe the State has the major responsibility to provide basic rights such as education, health, infrastructure and employment. In its full bench judgement in the Unnikrishnan Case (1993), the Supreme Court affirmed that the right to early childhood education is a fundamental right. Therefore, that’s the law of the land. Despite this, the RTE Act, 2009, excluded preschool education from its ambit. Children not only have a fundamental right to preschool education, but also to care, protection and nutrition. The RTE Act should cover children in the 0-6 age group and ensure they get care, education and development. But the Central and state governments are cutting their education budgets, and abdicating their duty and passing it on to for-profit private education providers. 

DT: You are against commercialisation of education. But in the TMA Pai Case (2002), the Supreme Court held that every citizen has the fundamental right to be engaged in the occupation of education. The point is that the State doesn’t want to raise its education budget. Yet there are many like you who criticise the commercialisation of education. So neither will the State provide education nor will it allow the private sector to provide it. Is this situation tenable?

NVP: That’s not the issue. Let me put things straight. Privatisation is different from private participation. I encourage private participation but not privatisation of the education system. The role of the private sector is to supplement efforts of the State, not to substitute it. The best education systems available in the West today are based on the neighbourhood school system. So if the fundamental right to education has to be realised, the State has to invest in providing education to all children. Many Supreme Court judgements have emphasised that education is a not-for-profit activity. We cannot allow profiteering in education. 

AR: India has a long tradition of community schools and private entrepreneurship in education. But they were never commercial. Now multinationals, private companies and entrepreneurs are entering education. But the plain truth is that universalisation of preschool and school education in all developed countries happened because of the State, not private schools. The private sector should not be allowed to commercialise education, and should be regulated. On the other hand, the government should upgrade and raise teaching-learning in all public schools to the standards of its own Kendriya Vidyalayas and Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas. 

SVP: Every time there’s a debate on education, it becomes a government versus private sector argument. Why can’t both co-exist? Look at the UK, USA and Dubai, where both co-exist peacefully. Governments in these countries don’t regulate tuition fees or fix teachers’ salaries. In India, the government not only regulates private schools but has also passed on part of its responsibility for providing education to private schools. Despite this, it doesn’t believe in consulting with private schools associations before making any rules and regulations. The RTE Act is now in its seventh year of implementation. How many children have benefited from it? Has the government done any research? Now it wants to drag early childhood education under the RTE Act. This will create another mess. Before government decides to bring preschool education under the RTE Act, it should sort out basic issues such as teacher training.

LA: The government of India should take ground realities into consideration before expanding the ambit of the RTE Act. Since the RTE Act was passed six years ago, thousands of private schools have been forced to shut down and others have stopped expanding because we don’t know when the government will throw a googly at us next.

PG: Yes. All legislation in India are idealistic documents, divorced from ground realities. That’s why I believe collaboration between the private and public sector is key to achieving universalisation of early childhood education. The government has infrastructure while the private sector has know-how and quality curriculums. We need to work together to achieve our common objective of ensuring that all children in the 0-6 age group receive quality ECCE.

DT: To conclude, the RTE Act should include preschool education but it should also be the duty of the State to provide ECCE to all children below six years of age. The onus is on the government to raise the quality of its anganwadis. It should not barge into private preschools and reduce them to the status of its anganwadis through reckless interference and regulation.