Decoding PM-SHRI

It is asserted that the central government will spend 66% of this Rs 27,360 crore scheme

The National Education Policy is already ‘revolutionising’ the country’s education sector, and whatsoever was lacking in this transformation will now be taken care of by the PM-SHRI (PM-ScHools for Rising India). This scheme attempts to be the guiding force for the nationwide implementation of the NEP. Learning may be a gradual process but education as a sector is in a hurry. This hurriedly cobbled up scheme defies any understanding of the economics and sociology of education.

The scheme, announced with grandeur, as every scheme is these days, envisages that 14,500 schools across the country are to be developed as PM-SHRI schools to present a model for other schools to follow, and they would be mentored to showcase all components of NEP 2020. This large number of schools, although still only 1.4 per cent of all the government schools in the country, is to present an example of 21st-century schooling. At this speed of upgradation of schools, by simple calculation, it would take at least another 72 years to upgrade all 1.32 million schools in the country, provided we do not open any more schools in that period

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The big economics behind this also makes it grand. It is asserted that the central government will spend 66 per cent of this Rs 27,360 crore scheme; that is, the central government will spend Rs 18,128 crore on these 14,500 schools in five years. By simple calculation, it is stated that selected schools will get around Rs 25 lakh each per year from the central government’s coffers as annual school grants, science kits, strengthening of infrastructure, etc. But therein lies a catch: it is that the ‘participating’ school will be eligible only when the state/UT where it is located signs a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the central government, agreeing to implement NEP in its ‘entirety’.

Now, all the states/UT of the Union of India have not agreed to adopt the NEP in its entirety. There are 12 states, including Delhi, that have a non-BJP government and these have very valid apprehensions about the NEP, which any analytical mind would indeed have. These 12 states have almost 50 per cent of the total number of 'blocks' in India, which is the basis for selection/geo-tagging of the school for PM-SHRI. These 3,000 blocks approximately, and the schools there, will not be able to benefit from PM-SHRI as the respective state/UT government is not willing to sign up to implementing the NEP in its entirety. This amounts to arm-twisting the states, which are always in need of funds for their schools. Education is still on the Concurrent List, and these kind of arm-twisting does not go well with the country’s federal structure.

The roadmap of the PM-SHRI schools to create and nurture holistic and well-rounded individuals equipped with key 21st-century skills is full of inconsistencies and inherent contradictions. The teachers, the curriculum, the textbooks of state-run/local bodies-managed schools are controlled by the respective SCERTs, school boards, and service rules of the respective state. How these will be manoeuvred and altered to abide by the NEP’s stipulations is not spelt out in the scheme. How, for instance, will the ‘one nation, one pedagogy’ aspiration of the NEP be implemented without restructuring the different curricula that obtain in the states?

The scheme also stipulates that schools, during the process of selection and during implementing PM-SHRI, would be assessed with specific key indicators being developed by the School Quality Assessment Framework (SQAF). The Centre has turned a blind eye to the confusion and chaos caused by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) for higher education institutions. Schools are more vulnerable to giving in to the demands of SQAF. This will revive ‘inspector raj’ in the schools again.

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This will also invariably create another hierarchy of schools within the already fragmented public school system. Any brainstorming on education veers toward how bad the situation is -- from dilapidated buildings, absent teachers, irrelevant syllabi, to no separate washrooms for girls and so on. If we are to resolve these issues by picking up a selected few thousand schools for funding, we will end up creating islands within the school system, and we will tend to evolve more stringent 'checks' in the system. But as the rising number of private schools tells us, the moment the poor become somewhat less poor, they opt for private schools. The PM-SHRI will thus end up just creating another wedge, and the poor and the poorer will merely be left vying for admission of their wards in the respective economic category of schools.

The scheme promises to adopt a 'saturation approach' to develop the selected schools with all modern facilities, perhaps meaning to assert that these schools would be so developed that there would be nothing more left to do for their further development. However, in the discourse of education, educational saturation is not taken as a positive attribute. Of course, it is too much to expect that education policies being developed by bureaucrats and technocrats should be able to respond to the grassroots-level understanding of education and schooling.

The progressive National Curriculum Framework 2005, and state curriculum frameworks, already suggest more experiential, holistic, integrated, play/toy-based inquiry, discovery-oriented, learner-centric pedagogy. Similarly, the emphasis on the mother-tongue and on learning with the aid of ICT are other suggestions that have been there for years, if not decades, now. What new innovation and innovative pedagogy is now being brought about is hard to fathom.

What is to be new in these schools is that the students are to be rooted in the knowledge and heritage of India and are expected to be proud of (not analytical of) our civilisational ethos and to be aware of their responsibilities toward nation-building. Wouldn’t this goal be served only if all schools across the country are treated equally, especially when these goals are already part of NEP 2020 and the upcoming NCF 2023? Picking and choosing a few thousand schools across the nation for showcasing and creating exemplars will only defeat the idea of common schooling and access to quality education for all.

(The writer teaches at the Central University of Himachal Pradesh)