PROOF THAT INDIA’S — AND especially Maharashtra’s — politicians live in fantasy world in which the wave of a magic wand can work wonders, is provided by a new year initiative of the BJP-Shiv Sena government of Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised state (pop.115 million). Under this initiative, 100 zilla parishad (rural) state government schools will be upgraded and transformed into ‘international’ schools affiliated with a newly constituted Maharashtra International Education Board (MIEB) established under a GR (government resolution) of January 2.

A second GR dated March 12, notified the government’s decision to constitute two supervisory bodies to regulate schools affiliated by MIEB. Vinod Tawde, the state’s education and sports minister, will chair an 11-member governing council to adjudicate affiliation applications and another 12-member steering and management committee, led by the director of MIEB, will design the syllabus and a model curriculum and co-coordinate the activities of special working groups for teacher training, learning impact audits etc.

Several well-respected educationists of the state are backing this ambitious proposal to swiftly raise teaching-learning standards of government rural primaries which according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), compiled and published by the highly-reputed Mumbai/Delhi-based Pratham Education Foundation, are rock bottom. ASER 2017, which for the first time assessed the learning outcomes of 14-18 year-old school-leavers in the rural Ahmednagar and Satara districts of Maharashtra, revealed that 25 percent of youth in this age group cannot read class III textbooks in their vernacular languages.

The MIEB council includes Shaheen Mistry, founder, Teach for India; Dr. Swaroop Sampat, vice president of the Early Childhood Association and Sonam Wangchuk, director of the Students Education and Cultural Movement of Ladakh. Most of the 12 management committee members are in advisory and/or leadership roles in established English-medium international schools. 

Under the pilot project, in the first year (2018-19) only K-classes III will follow the international curriculum. Progressively, the curriculum will be implemented upto class XII. According to education ministry officials, the syllabus/curriculum of MIEB-affiliated rural schools will be on a par with the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE), UK. But here’s the twist — the medium of instruction of all MIEB-affiliated rural schools will be Marathi, Maharashtra’s dominant and official language. English will be taught only as a subject.

“After researching various pedagogies, several international syllabuses and curriculums, we have developed a framework relevant to rural Maharashtra. We believe children have to learn about their state and country before learning about the world. We had a clear mandate from the education minister to use Marathi as the pre-dominant medium of instruction. It took us time to understand how learning in the mother tongue dramatically improves learning outcomes. Internationalisation of rural education is a brave and bold step,” says Francis Joseph, founder of the School Leaders Network (estb.2016), an association of 1,000 educationists and principals, and a member of the steering and management committee of MIEB. 

The serious intent of the BJP-Shiv Sena government to sharply upgrade rural education in Maharashtra is indicated in the Budget 2018-19 provision for primary schools. An impressive sum of Rs.26,667 crore has been allocated for primary education in the state government’s Budget 2018-19.

“The state government has been trying to improve the quality of education across Maharashtra. Our goal is for our students to rank among the Top 3 in international assessment tests such as PISA. By providing internationally benchmarked education in remote rural areas, we want to change the popular perception about poor learning outcomes in government schools,” says Nand Kumar, secretary, school education and sports of the Maharashtra state government. 

Yet even in the event that sufficient budgetary provision has been made for this ambitious project, several other hurdles are likely to slow down, if not sabotage it. Among them: professional translators to recast international curriculums in Marathi, sufficiently trained teachers in rural Maharashtra to transact the curriculum, and political aversion to English — the national link language and global language of business and commerce. 

It won’t be long before sponsors of this over-the-top initiative realise that the deep-rooted problems of primary education can’t be wished away by good intentions. Or a magic wand.

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)