Kapil Sibal shifts onus of education to the government

Kapil Sibal
Budget Allocation: Rs. 31,036 crore for school education. Most of this will go to RTE implementation (RTE will require an expenditure of Rs. 1,72,000 crore over the next five years)
Big Idea
Education becomes a Fundamental Right. It's the government's responsibility to ensure that children within the age group 6-14 get good quality education
Long-term Goals
Lift standards. Implement basic norms for infrastructure, teacher-student ratio etc. Schools will be derecognised if they don't comply.

In 1893, the king of Baroda, Maharaja Sayajirao III, implemented compulsory primary education in a small taluka in Amralli district. In this nine-village cluster, children from the ages of seven to 12 were educated. This tiny experiment was a roaring success and was extended to all 52 villages in the district. Eventually, compulsory primary education was extended to the entire state. This was India's first recorded stab at compulsory education.

Today Union Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal is trying to replicate the Maharaja's endeavour through the Right to Education (RTE) Bill. While the RTE Bill was passed in 2002, it is being notified only on April 1 this year. Sibal was also the chairman of the Drafting Committee when the Bill was being formulated during the then HRD Minister Arjun Singh's time.

Miles To Go
Ever since he took charge of the ministry, Sibal has been trying to engineer radical changes in the sector. "All these years, education was about politics and not reform. I give full credit to Sibal for pushing through reforms and not politicising education," says Madhav Chavan, founder and CEO of the
educational non-profit organisation Pratham.

The Bill has the potential to change the way education is viewed in India. Education will become a fundamental right for all children aged between six and 14. RTE will require Rs. 1,72,000 crore over the next five years. R. Govinda, vice-chancellor, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, who was also on the Drafting Committee says, "RTE will change the nature of discourse. Till now whatever we have done through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan or other initiatives have been projects that require inputs for improving the school system. Now education has become the fundamental right so it becomes the entitlement of every child." It is the government's responsibility of getting children within the target group into schools. This will be legally enforceable and one can go to court against the government if denied education.

Initiatives such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan have successfully put a lot of children into school. Estimates suggest that in 2001, 5 crore out of 21 crore children were out of school. Today that figure stands at a considerably lower 30-40 lakh. "State governments have done a lot for education," says Amit Kaushik, COO, Pratham. "The first step is access but now we need to move on to the next milestone: When you set up schools, what happens then?" he asks. Kaushik was a director in the HRD ministry before joining Pratham.

So far, it is not a very happy picture. Consider the following statistics from Pratham's Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) report: Only 50.3 percent of standard V students in government schools were able to read Standard II level text. Only 36.1 percent students were able to correctly solve a basic division problem.

The RTE has put in place a series of measures that not only aim to attack the problem of access, but also lift quality. Accessible schools within walking distance must be established. RTE mandates 25 percent reservation for children from weaker sections in Class I of all private schools. On the quality front, RTE has defined strict norms on the student-teacher ratio. So for grades 1-5 the law mandates that the student-teacher ratio will not exceed 40 for schools with more than 200 students. For those with up to 60 students, there should be two teachers at least. For grades 6-8, there should be at least one teacher for every 35 students and here schools need to have separate teachers for science and mathematics, social studies and languages. The minimum number of working days and instructional hours for teachers has been specified.

The government school system will have to be accountable. Arun Kapur, director, Vasant Valley School, New Delhi says, "In India 91 percent to 93 percent of school-going children actually go to government schools. Even if 60 percent to 70 percent of these schools improve, there will be a sea change."

Implementation will be tough. There is little focus on learning outcomes. In a bid to de-stress children, RTE has done away with examinations at the end of the year. "In the early stages, children are still growing and their cognitive development is taking place. They are not all growing at the same pace but they can all move ahead and come together at the same stage at a later level. Therefore, don't punish them by failing," says Govinda.

At the age of 14, children will be awarded a certificate of completion of elementary education. Kaushik says, "RTE is very input-focussed. It says very little on the outcomes of education - what a child will have achieved from 6-14." While RTE does say that examinations will be replaced by something called
Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation, no one is quite sure of what form that would take. Govinda clarifies the point, "This is a misleading notion that exams are out. I haven't come across a teacher who doesn't evaluate a student. I haven't come across a teacher who doesn't bother whether students are learning or not."

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