EDUCATION-INDIA: Poor Students Make Their Way into Posh Schools

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 25 2004 (IPS) - When Anshu began attending the nursery of one of Delhi’s 260-odd private schools this month, she became a pioneer of sorts.

She was among the first students to avail of a revolutionary court order requiring schools in the capital to reserve 25 percent of their seats for children from families that cannot afford to pay fees.

”There is no way I could have afforded the high fees charged by the Greenfields Public School. But I want my daughter to study there not only because the teaching standards are good but also because we live nearby,” Anshu’s father, Rajiv Kumar Sharma, told IPS.

Gaining admission for Anshu was possible mainly because Sharma happens to be working for Parivartan, an influential non-government organisation here that works on such issues as the right to information and corruption in public life.

It was also made possible by a determined mood in the judiciary and in the communist-supported Congress party government, elected to office three months ago, to ensure that the slogan ‘Education for All’ becomes a reality even if it means making better off people pay for it.

Indeed, the very first annual budget presented by the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a former economist with the World Bank, provides for a path-breaking two percent cess on all taxes.

This is expected to generate an additional one billion U.S. dollars annually that would then go into primary education.

But India’s failure to ensure free and compulsory education for all children, 57 years after independence from colonial rule, has to do more with a lack of political will, especially among provincial governments, than a lack of funds.

It was only this year that spending on education was moved from four percent of Gross National Product to six percent.

Dhir Jhingran of the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development says that over the past decade, most states have consistently spent less than what was allocated to them by the central government under programmes like the World Bank- supported District Primary Education Programme (DPEP).

Another central government programme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) – designed to provide universal elementary education and partly funded by the European Commission – utilised barely 800 million dollars of the 1.8 billion dollars of the planned expenditure for the financial year that ended in April.

”It is well-known that the education bureaucracy at the district and sub-district levels lacks initiative and transferring more funds only through the official machinery will bring limited results,” said Dhingran, adding that there was a need to bring transparency and accountability into programme implementation.

This year’s Economic Survey of India, released as part of the budgetary exercise, reported that increased school enrolment was being offset by an increased dropout rate, particularly at the upper primary stage.

“Between 2001-2002, nearly 82.2% of an estimated 193 million (children) in the 6-14 age-group was enrolled in schools as compared with 81.6% in 2000-2001,” the ESI report said. However, it also said that the dropout percentage increased from 53.7 percent in 2000-2001 to 54.6 percent in 2001-2002.

Funds are desperately needed to arrest the dropout rate as well as to fund the building of school infrastructure and the mid-day meal programmes, as the gruesome Jul. 16 fire tragedy in a school in Kumbakonam, southern Tamil Nadu state brought home so tragically.

Ninety students burned to death in the fire, which started in a thatch-roof school kitchen where the mid-day meal was being prepared and then quickly spread to the main schoolbuilding.

The Kumbakonam tragedy also showed up the near-complete lack of accountability on the part of officials who distribute funds to favour private school managements without first ensuring that they had the right infrastructure.

India’s primary education scene is characterised by the use by private managements of influence and money to corner benefits and funds meant for the public good, and their making tidy profits out of an increasing demand for quality education.

Anshu attends the well-appointed Greenfields Public School because of a Delhi High Court order on Apr. 27 ordering posh private schools to open their doors to poor children who may not be able to afford the fees, the costly uniforms, textbooks and stationery.

Surveys conducted among the capital’s top 10 private schools showed wards being charged monthly fees averaging 250 dollars – but including such facilities as horse riding and music lessons in their curricula.

In contrast, the schools run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi charge no fees but provide no worthwhile education, with very high dropout rates by the secondary stage.

The situation in rural areas is far worse. Many have to contend with absenteeism among teachers, rather than students, and with bad infrastructure – in some cases a lack even of classrooms.

Yet, India’s steady progress in primary education encouraged the World Bank to announce 500 million dollars as credit – to go into areas such as infrastructure and educational management – through the International Development Association (IDA) in April.

India has reduced from 39 million to 25 million the number of children between the ages of six and 14 that were out of school in 1999. But the country still accounts for a quarter of the world’s 104 million out-of-school children.

Since 2002, primary education has been a fundamental right for all children and the new government is expected to legislate shortly to make it compulsory as well. (END/IPS/AP/ED/DV/RDR/JS/04)