No quality spending on school education

Education spending has been lower than what is required but what has been spent is not a pittance.

There have been some vociferous demands of late to increase the public spending on education.

But unfortunately, there is no effective articulation on the bad quality of spending to the extent it is made and on the malfeasance, with great impunity, of the people whose actions and inactions are squarely responsible for the avoidable lacunae in the sector.

The recent Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014 once again mirrors the pathetic situation of school education. As high as 75 per cent of III, 50 per cent of V and 25 per cent of VIII standard students were not able to read, let alone understand, the simple text of a lower level, II standard.

Similarly, more than 75 per cent of III Standard students could not do a two digit subtraction and 56 per cent of VIII standard students could not solve the problems involving the division of three digits by one digit. Likewise, about 19.5 per cent of II Standard students could not recognise the numbers up to 9 and about 75 per cent of V standard students could not read simple English sentences.

No doubt the education spending has been lower than what has been required; the Kothari Commission recommended way back in 1966 to raise this spending to reach to a level of 6 per cent of GDP by 1985-86. That was never reached; it lingered between 3.1 and 3.8 per cent during 2001 to 2010, at the best.

Yet, what has been spent is not a pittance. The public expenditure on education was Rs 2.97 lakh crore in 2010-11, Rs 3.57 lakh crore in 2011-12 and budgeted to Rs 4.10 lakh crore in 2012-13. As a proportion of the GDP, educational spend has increased from 0.64 per cent (Rs 64.46 crore) in 1951-52 to 4.05 per cent (Rs 2.97 lakh crore) in 2010-11.

The ASER’s policy brief also acknowledges the ‘impressive strides made in terms of providing school buildings, classrooms, teachers, textbooks and other facilities during last two decades’ and it points to the

excellent achievement in school enrolments – 95 per cent of the children in the 6–14 age group. The heavy expenditure on education has also facilitated the establishment of 14,25,564 schools, primary to senior secondary, in the country as can be seen from  data presented in ‘Educational statistics at a glance – 2014’ of the Government of India.

The school teacher population is 82.68 lakh. Despite all this, the school environment is not encouraging to retain the students there; 47.4 per cent of the students are dropping out before completing their X standard and the mean years of schooling of those above 15 years in India is only 4.4 years as per UNDP’s data of 2012.

There could be several outside the school reasons, socio-economic problems, for pushing the students out of school. But the reasons within the school that repel the students are not less significant.

Teachers’ cruelty

Many teachers are not only incompetent but are cruel to the students. The ASER’s policy brief notes that the teachers were not following child friendly practices. The data analysis of 850 hours of class room observations has shown that the teachers were not even smiling, laughing or joking at least with some students in the class rooms.

A government publication, ‘Child protection: A handbook for teachers’ says, “many street and working children have pointed out corporal punishment at school as one of the reasons for running away from school and also from their families and homes,” “almost
all schools inflict corporal punishments” and “children are known to have had their bones and teeth broken, their hair pulled out and forced into acts of humiliation.”

The report has documented 40 types of corporal punishments teachers inflict on students causing them severe pain and humiliation. That means many of the perpetrators are going scot-free although what they do is an outright illegality.

Article 39 (f) of the constitution guarantees the children conditions of freedom and dignity while Section 17 (1) of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, specifically prohibits their physical punishment or mental harassment. But these things mean nothing to the erring teachers who ruin the lives of millions of our future citizens.

The government teachers who are supposed to be well qualified, trained and well paid can be retrained, disciplined and sensitised so that they can shun their brutality and learn to be child friendly. That does not need any extra spending, but will.

Who is primarily responsible for this guilt then? Is it the head of the school, who fails to discipline the errant teacher, responsible? Or, is it the government officials at different levels in the hierarchy who turn a Nelson’s eye?

Or, is it the persons above them, the political leaders who forget their responsibility towards their electors? Or, are we, the people, supposed to be the most powerful in a democracy, who vote the wrong persons to power, actually responsible? If that be so, do we need to wait till the general awareness increases whereby the people can effectively resist the mischief of their deputies?