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Rajasthan brings private sector in state-run primary schools, triggers fierce debate -Amulya Gopalakrishnan
-The Times of India

Neetu Meena, 16, in a pale blue uniform, wants to become a nurse. She is the first girl in her family to get this far at school. Schooling is not only free, she gets a scholarship and a bike to come in to the senior secondary government school in Jhar village, Bassi, near Jaipur.

At the school, a blackboard lists about twenty schemes, from special scholarships for girls, SC/STs, minority groups, war veteran families, to insurance, coaching and exchange programmes. There's a ramp for the disabled, there are spacious science and computer labs. Just across the road, Priyanka Public Senior Secondary School is clearly less equipped. The children learn in improvised sheds. And yet, parents seem to actively prefer to pay Rs 4,000 a year for primary schoolchildren and Rs 8,000 for older students, rather than send them to the government school.

There is much anecdata about this flight from government schools. Teachers are said to be distracted with other duties, and less accountable to parents. "As long as teachers get big government salaries, nothing will change," says Israil Khan in Akbarpur, Alwar. "Some parents say that they prefer private schools because they don't want STs cooking mid-day meals," says Munesh Sharma, a teacher at a government primary school in Nirbhaypura, Umren in Alwar.

A teacher who has taught at both government and private schools, observes that in private schools, children are whisked through classes, and teachers are more eager to please parents. They stress on English learning. Private schools have become a status symbol, and all but the very poor seem to opt for them. But what happens when the state agrees with them, and decides that government schools are dysfunctional?

Recently, the Rajasthan government stepped into tricky territory with its draft policy for PPPs in school education. The premise was stated right on top: given that the quality of education in government schools had been deteriorating despite increased spending, the state had decided to involve the more effective private sector in its schools. The draft laid out a few models by which the state would bear the fees of all or a section of the student body, but left staffing and infrastructure to the private partner.

Activists were incensed. A letter signed by 20 education experts pointed to research proving that in fact, fee-charging private schools do no better than public ones — and might even fall behind them, once the economic and social background of the children is factored in.

"There are Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodayas in the public system that provide high quality. Why can't the bar be raised for all government schools?" asks Ambarish Rai, national convenor of the Right to Education forum.

He points out that no country in the world, from the United States to Vietnam, has achieved literacy without relying on public education, and that there is no reason to believe that Rajasthan is the sole exception.

Value for money

What was the Rajasthan government thinking? About money, mostly. Some 88% of Rajasthan's school budget goes towards teachers' salaries and infrastructure, and other welfare obligations swell the bills... A government teacher makes about Rs 40,000 a month on average, while a private teacher is paid about a fifth of that, or even less.

"There may be no demonstrated difference between private and public school outcomes, but the point rarely mentioned is that private schools do it at a third of the price," says Karthik Muralidharan, economics professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has given inputs to the CM's advisory council. "The attempt here is to see if, for the same budget per child, the quality can be significantly scaled up."

While Muralidharan says he was not privy to the draft policy that had been put up, he stresses that this is a small-scale pilot, and no substitute for government school system. "PPPs are being considered for 50-100 schools at most, less than 1% of the number of Adarsh schools the government is focused on."

He says it is like the ongoing charter school experiment in the US, which combines public funding with private operations. There are no international examples of proven success, he admits, but says that "India has unique challenges."

Evading responsibility

But its critics say that in all its gestures towards education reform — from rationalising schools to PPPs — the Rajasthan government has seemed not to care about spreading access to the most disadvantaged. Rajasthan has the highest number of out-of-school children, and the highest number of illiterates, according to SECC 2011.

"It's all very well to talk of choice, but what choice do the poor have?" says Rai. There is no alternative to fixing the holes in government schooling. The right to education is a constitutional obligation, solemnly enacted by Parliament. But instead of re-establishing faith in public schooling, the state is fobbing off its duty on to others. "The problem is the lack of trained teachers, infrastructure and monitoring. But instead of investing as they should, both the Centre and states are cutting funds," he says.

"Education and health are the last frontiers of the state. If you can't run schools and hospitals, why stand for elections? " asks Nikhil Dey of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan.

Others ask how accountability will be extracted from the private partners, and how the state can be trusted to regulate schools if it can't trust itself to run them. "Government schools are failing mainly because of poor monitoring. If the state cannot oversee the functioning of its own schools now, what oversight will it provide for privately-run schools?" asks Vimala Ramachandran, former NUEPA professor and director of education consultancy ERU.

The outcry has had some effect. As of now, the state has rolled back this contentious draft. According to the secretary of secondary education, Naresh Gangwar, "it is being studied by the chief minister's advisory council, and will then go through inter-ministerial consultations."

The one brief glimpse of its intentions for PPPs in school education was enough to raise deep concerns. As the policy is further refined in coming months, it will be closely watched.