A recent UN report has identified private tuition as a major source of “unethical behaviour” in India, observing that it has become a major industry, consuming a considerable amount of parents’ money and pupils’ time.
The report said, a recent survey has revealed that 70 per cent of urban children in the country received private tutoring in one or more subjects.
Corrupt schools
In its report “Corrupt schools, corrupt universities: What can be done” the UN body’s International Institute of Education Planning (IIEP) has also assessed the nature and extent of the problem of corruption in education worldwide and evaluated the cost in economic terms.
It cautions that corrupt practices in education will cost India around 20 per cent of its Gross National Product.
Academic fraud
Identifying academic fraud as a matter of concern in India, the UNESCO report said fees for manipulating entrance test scores might be between US $80 and US $20,000 for the most popular programmes like computer science, medicine and engineering.
Maintaining that a variety of misbehaviour associated with the teachers could disturb implementation of planned intervention within the education sector and particularly progress towards the goal of “Education for All”, the report said a 10 per cent increase in teacher absenteeism was associated with a 1.8 per cent decrease in student attendance and that a 20 per cent decrease in teacher attendance was associated with a 2 per cent decrease in test scores.
It has quoted a study to show that teacher absenteeism was not a marginal phenomenon and it could be as high as one-third of all teachers as in the Uttar Pradesh.“Two teachers out of five are absent on a normal school day in Bihar,” the report said adding that there were state-wise variations like 38 per cent in Bihar compared to 15 per cent in Gujarat.
‘Resource leakage’
“A simple calculation based on the assumption that 90 per cent of the budget is devoted to teachers’ salaries reveals that this represents roughly 10-20 per cent of leakage of educational resources,” it said.
However, the authors, education specialists Jacques Hallak and Muriel Poisson, have also lauded India’s Right to Information Act, stating that freedom of press and access to information were keys to transparency and accountability.