What’s ailing Indian schools?

Mahesh Vijapurkar

Strange things happen in India in the cause of furthering school education. They have included three language formula, non-detention for a few years, free schooling for girls, an attempt to build toilets to prevent girls from dropping out, and the right to education. Not all of them have worked and getting a child through school is getting expensive because the government is letting the private sector take it over as a business.

Now, Maharashtra is considering doing away with English and maths as subjects, at best retain them as optionals, because most failures at the school boards are due to these two subjects. The education minister Vinod Tawde has spoken of compiled data sheets which indicate these two as the culprits, not the level of teaching or superintending the schools.

Schools are getting to be ‘international’, outside the purview of the state control. This move seems to be serious because the chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis has told the Centre, keen on skilling, that the state was working towards a system where ‘’no student failed in the tenth class exam by creating a certificate as ‘passed’ and ‘fit for skills’ for those who either score low or are not able to clear their examinations”. That is, the bar is to be lowered in a system of questionable standards.

We know that about half the school pupils across the country - in government, from the panchayat to civic body schools – in higher classes cannot read what they were taught in the Standard III. That includes words and sentences written in a language which is their mother tongue, a language in which all states take pride in. Nor can they do the sums. Which means poor ability to communicate and count the change.

Surprisingly, this comes at a stage when parents hanker after English medium education because they see it as a window to the world, a global village. Unlike the government, or politicians who man the system, they see the significance of mainstreaming their children with the world. The government seems to see affection for the mother tongue as a natural disenchantment with English.

Maharashtra is being cited as an example, not being singled out as a serial offender in the matter of education. Despite the Annual Status Education Reports that come out with predictable regularity harping on the low standards of education, few states have done precious little to make amends and help develop a proper human resource base.

It is as if the masses are being readied for only dead-end lowest category of employment. It cannot be that we see access to schools, not mere access to a fair level of teaching and its positive impact in helping pupils to learn, is the norm in determining how well the country was doing in this sector. You may have RTEs et al, but the single-room schools and absentee teachers, who in themselves are of doubtful ability to impart knowledge makes mockery of it all. Budgets are not a measure, the outcomes are. But it seems at least one state is willing to change the goalposts by reducing the standards.