Question- Give New Assaults on Right to Education.

Ans.

New Assaults on Right to Education

During the past 2-3 years, the neo-liberal forces have come up with new forms of assaults on the notion of Right to Education and Common School System. It is critical that we learn to identify and deconstruct these assaults. Here are three examples that should enable us to identify all such moves that will emerge in future:

(i) A new diversionary tactic was conceived and effectively used to create confusion in the debate during and following the drafting of the Right to Education Bill, 2005 by the CABE Committee (Chaired by Kapil Sibal, Minister of State for Science & Technology, Govt. of India). This was about the proposed provision of 25% reservation for weaker sections in private unaided schools drawn from the latter’s neighbourhood. The entire debate was diverted away from the issue of the Common School System to the problems that the private school lobby is likely to face in finding resources for such reservations and the cultural gap between those who pay fees (presumably from upper castes) and those who would get the same education due to their entitlement (presumably from lower castes). Hardly anyone was bothered that the notion of 25% reservation implied that 75% of the children paying fees shall not come from the neighbourhood. Does this amount to a move towards equality or charity? Would the charging of fees from the privileged children in the 6-14 year age group not amount to violation of Article 21A? An issue of even greater significance is about the number of children this provision is likely to ‘benefit’. Let us make an estimate. The enrolment at the elementary stage in the private unaided schools (including the low quality unrecognized ones) in the whole country is hardly 20% of the total enrolment at this stage (Seventh All India School Educational Survey, NCERT, 2003). This means that the total capacity of the private unaided school sector to provide elementary education is limited to a maximum of 4 crore (40 millions) children out of 20 crore (200 millions) children in the 6-14 year age group. If 25% of this capacity of the private school sector is reserved for the weaker sections, the number of the so-called ‘beneficiaries’ can in no case exceed 1 crore children. What about the Right to Education of the remaining 19 crores (190 millions) (including those 3 crores (30 millions) who are required to pay fees in private schools)? Clearly, the proposal of 25% reservation in private schools has nothing to do with either the issue of Right to Education or Common School System. Nor does it lead us to a programme of systemic transformation that is urgently required in order to fulfill the obligations flowing out of 86th Amendment. Yet, the political leadership concerned with policy formulation and the bureaucracy as well as the media, child right organizations and even the judiciary has gone overboard in promoting the idea of ‘25% issue’ as if the Right to Education is realizable only through this mechanism. This apparently myopic perception is a result of the ruling class knowing that (a) the proposal of 25% reservation will not necessitate any changes in the national economy that may go against its vested interests; and (b) this will only help legitimise the ongoing privatization and commodification of education.

(ii) The XI plan has made a cleverly phrased reference to the Voucher System for government school children without any evidence of prior democratic consultation or academic discourse. What is Voucher System? The idea was first proposed by Milton Friedman, the well-known advocate of neo-liberal economics from USA. As per its promoters in India (the so-called civil society groups propped up by international agencies advocating neo-liberalism), the government will provide the under-privileged children school vouchers that promise to pay their fees in private schools contingent upon the children getting admission. However, the promoters are not telling the public that the system has either already collapsed in several countries or not made much headway. The hidden agenda of course is to provide backdoor funding to private schools by shifting resources from the government schools using the instrumentality of the voucher. The market lobby knows that this will be an effective means of demolishing the vast government school system and thus accelerating the pace of privatization and commercialisation of school education. With the destruction of the system of publicly funded schools, there shall be ‘free for all’ situation wherein, not just the fee structure, but the curriculum and pedagogy too will be guided by the market alone. This is precisely what the voucher system lobby is aiming at - i.e. taking school education out of the Constitutional domain!

(iii) As explained above, the neo-liberal forces have operated a policy design during the past 15 years aimed at demolishing the government school system. After already having achieved considerable success in these objectives, these forces are now organizing so-called researches and studies on the school system in India through partnership with NGOs and individual academics. All these studies are designed to produce data to establish how ineffective is the government school system in terms of poor pupil-teacher ratio, teacher absenteeism, poor quality of teaching and low achievement levels (e.g. World Bank-sponsored studies in Shahadara locality of Delhi or Pratham’s all-India ASER Reports, 2006 and 2007). However, no such report throws any light on how these schools have reached this state of ineffectiveness and what needs to be done in order to reverse the process. Nor do these reports tell us about the role played by the ruling class in collusion with the market forces in destroying a school system that was functioning fairly well only 20-25 years ago. Obviously, the compulsion to destroy the credibility of the government schools is so overpowering for the market forces that it does not have any space for truth whatsoever.

...Prev | Next...