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RTE fails to lift learning outcomes by Prashant K Nanda

Third report in three months to highlight lack of quality education in India; poses risk to knowledge hub hopes

Nearly two years after the Right to Education (RTE) Act was introduced with the promise of providing free and compulsory education to all primary school children, the learning outcome in the country has actually deteriorated in terms of quality.

In yet another wake-up call for policymakers, the 2011 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) compiled by Pratham, an education non-profit, says that less than one in two class V students are able to read class II level texts. While the proportion was 48.2% in 2011, it was 53.7% in 2010, when RTE was enforced. Similarly, only 29.9% of class III students were able to handle a two-digit subtraction in 2011; the proportion was 36.3% a year earlier.

The report, released on Monday, is the third in three months to highlight the lack of quality education in India, posing the risk of eroding the long-term competitiveness of Asia’s third largest economy.
First, the Quality Education Survey (QES) by Wipro Ltd and Educational Initiatives, an education assessment organization, found high-end schools in metros lacked quality parameters and largely depended on rote learning.

Then, a study by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), whose findings were first reported by Mint on 20 December, found that out of 74 countries, Indian school students at the higher secondary level ranked almost at the bottom, with only Kyrgyzstan faring worse than India.

The PISA study, coordinated by Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, mapped education standards in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, two states which rank highly in human development indices.

The Pratham report, which surveyed some 650,000 primary school students across rural India, found that although enrolment had gone up significantly to 97%, dependence on private schools and private tutors had increased.

At the national level, private school enrolment rose from 18.7% in 2006 to 25.6% in 2011. Shockingly, in Kerala and Manipur, private school enrolment was in excess of 60%, a probable indication that government schools had failed to provide access to education of quality.

In rural Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, the private enrolment ratio was in the range of 30-60%. Between 20% and 25% of all children attended paid tuition classes outside school.

“The study indicates that perhaps RTE has (had) a flat impact,” said Madhav Chavan, one of the founders and the chief executive of Pratham. “If 25% of students are in private schools and a similar number are taking private tuition, then it can be said that at least 50% of the students are not learning at government schools. It is financially taxing on parents.”

While enrolment has gone up, the attendance level has fallen. At the all-India level, children’s attendance dropped from 73.4% in 2007 to 70.9% in 2011 in rural primary schools. In the case of Bihar, the decline was 9%, and in Uttar Pradesh, 7%.

After the metros and high-performing states, the current ASER report tells the plight of rural schools in some 558 districts of the total 634-odd districts in the country.

What the ASER, PISA and QES reports do is paint a complete picture of education in a country that has been betting big on human capital and aspiring to become a knowledge hub for the world.

The RTE came into force on 1 April 2010, and the government committed a sum of Rs. 2.31 trillion for the implementation of the Act over a period of five years. The budget is to be shared between the Union and state governments in a 65:35 ratio.

In other words, governments had a mandate to spend some Rs. 46,000 crore yearly until 2015 for improving the primary school system in the country. The central government had given three years to states to put the system in place.

Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, who released the report in New Delhi, said that it was a “little unfair to look at the outcome of RTE” so soon after its introduction.

“In five to seven years, it will show the impact and we will see improvement,” he said, while conceding that “the state governments have to be far more pro-active”.

Sibal, who is largely credited with putting the RTE in place, said he wants to introduce a quality assessment test like the Graduate Records Examination (GRE) or Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) for students after class XII, but the states were reluctant.

“I am trying to bring this for last two years, but states are not on board,” he said.

Piramal group chairman Ajay Piramal, who is chairman of the board of governors at the new Indian Institute of Technology in Indore, said the country “owes it (quality education) to the children”. Piramal, who was also present at the event to release the report, said the private sector “will help in whatever little way” possible to improve the quality of education.

The Pratham report said not much had changed in the student-teacher ratio after RTE’s introduction.

“There has been a marginal improvement in the proportion of schools complying with RTE norms on pupil-teacher ratio, from 38.9% in 2010 to 40.7% in 2011.”

In other words, in three out of every five schools, one teacher manages more than 30 students in a classroom. Kerala has a 94.1% compliance level. Similarly, drinking water facilities, mandatory under RTE, still elude some 16.6% of schools. The figure was 17% in 2010.

One positive: the study shows a decline in the dropout rate among girl students. It dropped from 17.6% in 2006 to 4.3% in 2011 in Bihar and from 18.9% to 8.9% in the same period in Rajasthan.

Kiran Bhatty, the RTE commissioner in charge of monitoring the Act, pointed to RTE violations by private schools.

“What we find as a major challenge is that private schools are flouting the RTE norms at will,” Bhatty said. “Under RTE, there should be no entrance or interview for selecting students (for admissions), but it’s not being followed entirely.”