Common School System End Apartheid in Education
A K SHIVA KUMAR
 
It is time for the prime minister to declare an educational emergency. This is the only way to end the growing divide in education being perpetuated by the extraordinary expansion in educational opportunities for the privileged and the gross neglect of basic education for the poor and socially disadvantaged. Unless this educational divide is eliminated, many gains made in this field will be wiped out.

Providing quality education is the most obvious way for India to move forward to secure the future of millions of children, improve the quality of life, sustain econo-mic progress and promote social justice. It is also the best way for India to get rid of the tag of underdevelopment and backwardness by 2020. As John Kenneth Galbraith reminds us, there is no literate population that is poor and no illiterate population that is other than poor.

The widening gap between the learning opportunities available to the haves and have-nots is creating a kind of apartheid in education. The most deprived are rural, poor, and socially disadvantaged communities which are increasingly marginalised and excluded from enjoying the exceptional economic resurgence taking place today. The way forward is not to restrict the expansion in choices, but to make them uniformly available to all children regardless of whether they are boys or girls, where they are born, who their parents are, where they study, or what caste they belong to. We have to develop zero tolerance for inferior education and for a two-track schooling system.

Ensuring quality education is the next major challenge for India. More surveys are not needed to confirm what parents everywhere know — that children, in both government and private schools, actually learn very little even after many years of education. Radical reforms are needed to upgrade the quality of teaching and enrich the learning experience. India has the capacity and the experience to achieve a major leap forward. Revamping the teaching-learning process requires the close co-operation and partnership of the state with the community, with teachers, with NGOs and professional groups.

As is often said, and attributed to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh, EFA (Education for All) will not happen without AFE (All for Education). Like with HIV/AIDS, quibbling over numbers as the HRD ministry is doing today distracts attention from the many positive developments which are taking place. Official statistics, for instance, report that there are over 157 million children studying in primary and upper-primary schools. By its own admission, the government reported that in 2000, there were 59 million children between 6-14 years who were out of school, 35 million of them girls. All of sub-Saharan Africa reports only 44 million children out of school.

The issue here is not whether sub-Saharan Africa is under-reporting its figures, or whether the figure for India is overestimated or wrongly reported. It is shameful for any child, no matter where, to be deprived of access to good quality education and denied the opportunity to learn and enjoy schooling. The real concern ought to be with the plight of millions of children who learn so little after many years in school. Unfortunately, there are no standardised tests that assess uniformly and systematically the learning achievements of children. That children in schools learn little is no secret. The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for policy-making are aware of this. That is one reason why they do not send their own children to government schools.

Nothing can be achieved without allo- cating more financial resources to basic education. This is the third essential condition for energising India's school system. The government reports that 95 per cent of India's rural population residing in 826,000 rural habitations have a primary school within a walking distance of one kilometre. But what kind of schools are these? Many centres under government patronage can hardly qualify as schools. These are often justified on the grounds that some education is better than no education at all.

But for how long will we turn a blind eye to the reality of 60 or 70 or even more children belonging to different classes sitting in one dilapi- dated room being taught many subjects simultaneously by a single teacher? Urgent and substantial inputs are needed to transform these Educational Guarantee Centres into, what Azim Premji calls, Learning Guarantee Schools. Poor quality basic education is not what a nation as resourceful as ours should aspire to for its children. Funds are readily forthcoming to buy battleships, modernise airports, construct malls, and host international sports meets. But there is an inexplicable reluctance to upgrade India's government school system.

All of us need to wake up to this crisis in education. Giving basic education a major push is a matter of fundamental right as much as it is an economic necessity. The way forward is to institute a common school system for all Indian children irrespective of class, caste and gender, a goal articulated many years ago by the Kothari Commission. Even if all children are not born equal, they have the right to education of equally good quality. The emergency before India is not statistical; it is not financial. The crisis is partly political, but also moral and ethical.

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