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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

The Right to Learn
-Economic and Political Weekly

Two years after the Right to Education Act, the government needs to focus on quality.

Two years is perhaps too short a period in which to assess how effective the groundbreaking Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE), which came into effect on 1 April 2010, has been in raising standards of education in a country as diverse as India. The very fact that such an Act was passed is significant. But assessments are inevitable and the measurable results, although discouraging sometimes, need not mean that the effort has failed. Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal seemed to suggest just this even as he acknowledged that despite impressively enhanced investment in primary education, the results so far have not been spectacular.

The additional investment, up from Rs 7,166 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 25,555 crore allocated for 2012-13, has ensured that some of the glaring gaps in physical infrastructure have been tackled. Thus, more government primary schools today have buildings, running water and other basic requirements that schools should have. There has also been substantial progress in increasing e­nrolment with the national average now at 98.3% (2009-10) although non-government organisations would put that figure at 96%. In physical infrastructure, a glaring hole remains in the provision of toilets. According to an extensive survey by Pratham of primary schools across India, two-thirds of the schools surveyed had only one toilet and less than half had a separate toilet for girls. Of these only 50% were unlocked and therefore usable. The absence of toilets can be a real disincentive to continuing in school for girls once they cross puberty.

Yet, although enrolment has increased, actual attendance in classes has declined. The 2011 edition of Pratham’s Annual ­Status of Education Report (ASER) shows a decline in enrolled students present in class over five years. For instance, in 2007, 73.4% of students enrolled for Stds I-IV/V were present in class. By 2011, this figure had fallen to 70.9% in the same group des­pite the RTE. The drop seems marginal on paper but is significant given the thrust to primary education through the RTE Act. These students might not necessarily have dropped out altogether. But it is probable that what they learn in school is not enough to keep them engaged. In fact, the increase in private tuitions even for primary school students could be linked to the absence of students from the classroom.

More than anything, the absence of students is linked to the quality of learning in schools, something that the RTE Act does not address directly although some of the requirements – such as having a library – ought to enhance learning. But how much children learn in school depends not just on the physical infrastructure, but also on the methods of teaching, the type of textbooks and the skill of the teacher. There also need to be enough teachers. This is perhaps the most glaring deficiency in the system that still needs to be addressed. According to some assessments, there are half a million vacancies for teachers in government primary schools. As a result, two-thirds of all classrooms are multi-grade, that is, one teacher attending to children from different grades in the same classroom. It requires little imagination to v­isualise the quality of education imparted in such circumstances.

Quality of learning is difficult to measure. Successive ASER reports have tried to do precisely this over the last five years. According to ASER 2010, 50% of Grade 5 children could not read books assigned for Grade 2 level. The levels in mathematics were even worse. For the RTE to have any real meaning, it is clear that this problem must be addressed by improving the quality of teaching – through appropriate textbooks and skilled teachers. Half learning of the kind being imparted at present can result in two things. One, given the urge of even poor parents to educate their children, many will be compelled, as they already are, to pay for private tuitions or even send their children to private schools instead of availing of the free education provided by government schools. Two, we will have a generation of so-called “educated” youth without the skills to access the livelihood options that education offers. Being semi-educated and unemployed is a potent mixture in a society already ­staggering under growing inequity.

The fall in attendance levels revealed by surveys, including the government’s own survey, ought to alert it to this very real lacuna in the implementation of the RTE. This is the time, after two years into the programme, to turn attention to the textbooks, the training of teachers – not just to improve the skills of those there but to create more institutions to bring in many more teachers to fill the huge gap that exists – and to make the process of learning engaging enough to retain the children who have been persuaded to enrol. The true measure of quality education is how much children absorb and retain while being taught. The thrust of implementing RTE now should be on ­making this happen.