Given the abysmal level of teaching in government schools in states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, parents prefer to enroll their children in private institutions even though many do not comply with the CBSE standards, says Shams Tamanna
In the interim budget of 2019-20, about `94, 000 crores have been allocated to the education sector, which is 10 per cent higher than the previous financial year. In the interim budget, `56,386.63 crore has been allocated to school education compared to `37,461.01 crore for higher education. Whereas in the last financial year `50,000 crores had been allocated. In the National Education Mission, only a provision of `38,573 crore has been made. These amounts include provisions for digitising the class room, improving the level of teaching and giving the teachers proper training. According to experts, there has been an increase of 3.69 per cent in the education budget in this fiscal year.
Despite spending a large amount of money on school education by the Central and State governments in our own budget, the condition of government schools is abysmal. As a result, the parents enrol their children in private schools. Recently, Unified Distinct Information System for Education (U-DICE) and several non-governmental organisations have pointed out the gaps by highlighting this trend, the condition of government schools and the level of education of teachers.
According to the report and data released by U-DICE, parents in Bihar and UP are disappointed with the performance of government schools. According to the report, in 2016-17, in Bihar, the number of children enrolled has decreased by 15 lakh. In 2015-16, where 2.35 crore children were enrolled in government schools in Bihar, the figure decreased to 2.19 crore in 2016-17. During the same period in Uttar Pradesh, the figure decreased from 1.62 crore to 1.52 crore. Overall, enrollment of about 56.59 lakh children in government schools across the country has decreased and UP as well as Bihar alone accounted for 43 per cent of the total figures.
Parents prefer private schools as they think that government ones teach English as a subject, that too nominally. They believe that children from English medium schools can get admission in premier higher education institutions of the country.
In states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the improvement in their financial status is also one of the main reasons behind the growing trend of parents sending their children to private schools. According to a report of the Central Statistics Office, per capita income in Bihar has increased from `8,560 in 2004-05 to `16,652 in 2014-15. During the same period in UP, it increased from `14,580 to `22,892 per person.
In Bihar and UP, private schools which do not comply with CBSE standards have seen a rapid increas in enrollment of children. These charge fees arbitrarily besides forcing parents to purchase stationary and uniforms from the school itself. Instead of prescribing NCERT books, expensive books from private publishers are prescribed in return for fat commission. The governments of these two states have decided to act. The Bihar government has enacted Act 2018 for fixing the fee, the U P government has decided to implement the UP self-financed independent school (Regulation of Tariff) Bill, 2017.
Professor Geeta Gandhi of the London-based Institute of Education, in a research in 2017, said that students enrolling in government schools of 20 states of India between 2010-11 and 2015-16 decreased by 1.3 crore. In the same period, 1.75 crore new students have been enrolled in private schools. According to research, the reason is the highly-educated teachers in these schools.
According to educationist Shamima Shabbir, the large number of unemployed graduates in the country often work for low salaries in private schools.
On the other hand, quality education is declining due to lack of teachers in government schools. Research shows that 60 lakh teachers’ positions have been sanctioned by the government, but approximately 10 lakh of these are lying vacant in government schools across the country at many different levels. Of these 9 lakh vacant positions are in primary schools alone. At the primary level, more than 2.24 lakh posts are vacant in UP and 2.03 lakh in Bihar. In the primary and secondary schools of West Bengal and Jharkhand, one-third teachers are vacant on average. This is followed by Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where the situation is somewhat better but not satisfactory. Sikkim is the only state in the country where 100 per cent posts of teachers are filled at primary and secondary levels. While at the secondary level, the lowest number of teachers in the country is in Jharkhand. Even Bihar has more than 17,000 vacancies sanctioned on secondary level, whereas in UP, the sanctioned posts of about 7,000 secondary teachers are lying vacant. In Jammu and Kashmir, there are vacancies of more than 21,000 teachers at the secondary level where only 4,436 posts out of 25,657 sanctioned posts have been filled.
According to a research by the Center for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Child Right and You (Cry), the lack of qualified teachers plagues almost all the states of the country. Bihar is the worst in terms of teacher-student ratio, number of teachers and also in terms of their training across the country. According to the report, 38.7 per cent teachers in primary schools of Bihar are not trained. Whereas the number of such teachers at the secondary level is 35.1 per cent West Bengal comes in second where 31.4 per cent at the primary level and 23.9 per cent teachers at the secondary level are untrained.
Surprisingly, the government teachers in India get higher salaries than the ones in private schools. According to a 2013 analysis of Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winner and Jean Dreze, eminent economist, the salary of teachers of government schools in UP is four times more than the per capita GDP of India. Despite this, according to the Programme for the International Assessment (PISA) test, which rates teachers, India ranked 73rd out of 74 countries.
The biggest reason for the poor quality of government schools is the apathy and carelessness of the education department officials. The Allahabad High Court verdict of 2015 in which the court had made it mandatory that all the bureaucrats and government employees should send their children to government schools should be implemented. Fifty-five per cent of the country’s children (about 26 crore) study in government schools. In such a case, it is not enough to allocate a huge budget to improve the standard of education in government schools, but there is a need for honesty and dedication for all-round improvement.
—Charkha Features
