Education policy in India ensures children’s right to sit in classrooms, but not the right to learn. Yet schooling without learning is meaningless and squanders the life-chances of millions of Indian children and jeopardises economic growth.

The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 and associated discussions so far have almost totally ignored the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. But many of its provisions are harming Indian education and pushing learning levels down from the already pitiably low base of 2009. Thus, the most important objective of NEP 2016 should be to nullify the effects of such provisions by legislating a new Right to Learn Act that will supersede the RTE Act.

This essay highlights four reforms that are essential for improving education in India.

Use the power of incentives to reform public school quality. Section 6 of the RTE Act obligates state governments to establish free-of-charge public schools in all sizeable habitations. However, public schools are emptying due to their perceived low quality. Therefore the legislation is binding states to promote more of the type of schools students are deserting. Since 2010, student enrolment in public (i.e. government) schools countrywide has fallen by 11.3 million while enrolment in private schools has risen by 18.5 million students and the number of ‘small’ government schools (with total enrolment of only 20 or fewer students) has increased to 96,965.

The major reason for parents abandoning public schools is insufficient teacher effort (high absence/low time-on-task) and the consequent poor learning outcomes of children, and not high pupil-teacher ratio (since that is only 28:1 as per official DISE data), or lack of trained teachers (public schools have a far higher percentage of certified teachers than private schools) as previously thought. The nub is teacher accountability.

Therefore instead of establishing more non-accountable public schools, NEP 2016 needs to promote well-considered public-private-partnerships of the type that have worked elsewhere in the world. Such as voucher schools, since this form of student-directed funding gives schools an intrinsic incentive to provide good education to attract and retain students. Another incentivising tool is to introduce teacher appraisal and a mild form of performance-related pay and promotion.

Judge school quality by learning outcomes not by inputs. S.19 of the RTE Act makes it obligatory for state governments to close down private schools that don’t comply with the physical infrastructure and pupil-teacher ratio norms specified. But since s.18 exempts government schools from having to obtain a certificate of recognition, non-compliant public schools aren’t closed down. Moreover, enthusiastic state governments have added a number of other norms and conditions for recognition which are more difficult to comply with, e.g. UP’s government order dated May 8, 2013 notifies about 40 different recognition conditions for private schools.

By one estimate, state governments have closed down 4,355 private schools and given closure notices to another 15,083 for non-compliance, threatening the education of nearly 4 million children, according to a National Independent Schools Alliance 2015 report. These schools provide education at a fraction of the per-pupil-cost of government schools: the median fee of private schools (low and high fee, rural and urban schools taken together) is a mere Rs.300 per month, according to National Sample Survey 2014 data. Thus paradoxically, an Act which avowedly guarantees children’s right to education is in fact snatching away that right because of recognition conditions that have only a tenuous connection with learning outcomes.

Change incentive structure for government schools by changing the form of funding. The RTE Act doesn’t touch upon the issue of the form of funding to government and aided schools. However the public interest demands a change from the current system of block grants to schools, to a system of per student funding. When a school’s funds receipt from government is dependent on its enrolment, the management will have a stake in making the effort to provide acceptable quality education to attract and retain students.

Reorient teacher training programmes to strengthen subject-matter knowledge. Teacher competence levels are lamentably low in India. SchoolTELLS and Inside Classrooms studies indicate that subject-matter knowledge, teaching and assessment capabilities are deeply problematic areas. For instance, only 25-28 percent of teachers in UP and Bihar can correctly do percentage and area sums prescribed in class V textbooks. Less than 10 percent of teachers pass the Teacher Eligibility Test.

To neglect the quality of education is to sleep-walk into disaster. The prime objective of NEP 2016 must be to massively improve the quality of dysfunctional and emptying government schools in which 70 percent of India’s children study. It must substitute the RTE Act with a new Right to Learn Act.

(Dr. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon is professor at the Institute of Education, University College, London)