A year has passed since I last posted here. Time has been in short supply and my offering this time is another note I wrote for the Annual Report of Centre for Learning Resources as its Director. I hope you will find it interesting.
QUOTE
Government is by far the largest provider of education in
India. Between 50% and 80% of children depend on government schools for their
entire education. The figure is much larger for the poorest and the most
disadvantaged segments of our population, for whom government schools remain
the only affordable way of getting a conventional education.
The government is also the sole regulator of the education
system, and its powers of regulation have become far more codified and
pervasive after the passage of RTE Act. At the higher education level, there
are autonomous bodies such as UGC and AICTE for such regulation, but primary
and secondary education is regulated departmentally.
The poor quality of education in India’s schools has
generated some comment in recent years but, by and large, it has not been at the
centre of attention it deserves. RTE Act reinforced the trend by devoting so
little space to quality that it requires considerable effort to find the
relevant mentions tucked away in Sec 29. And surveys like ASER, which have for
years highlighted the distressingly low levels of educational proficiency among
India’s children, now seem to only provoke yawns among the educational
establishment.
It is time to ask whether the dual hats that the education
departments around the country wear, as dominant provider of education as well
as its regulator, are serving the nation. When a provider is its own regulator,
efficiencies are likely to be low, quality compromised, innovation undervalued,
competition stifled, and cronyism fostered. In India’s case, this is not just a
reasonable supposition; we have empirical evidence that it is so. The yawns are
no surprise; they are the inevitable response of a provider that has no
external regulator to answer to.
The public has responded by voting with their feet.
Enrolment in government schools has declined continuously over the last several
years. However, in the absence of a high quality regulator, the alternatives
available to most children are almost equally pathetic – the large majority of
private schools do little better on quality measures. The public can express a
vote of no-confidence; they can’t replace a professional regulator who has the
ability to conceptualise, demand and guide.
Unfortunately, UGC and AICTE provide little comfort that the
presence of an external regulator in education makes a positive difference.
However, they were both installed at a time when the quality concerns hadn’t
become as pressing; their organisational structures and philosophy reflect the priorities
of the times. They have failed to change from there, but there is no reason why
an institution created to respond to today’s challenges should be similarly
ineffective.
Telecommunication sector provides an instructive example. For
the first few years of mobile telephony, DOT was entrusted with regulation of
the sector. Short-sighted self-interest led to a spate of litigation and, for a
while, the sector came to a stand-still. The government showed great sagacity
in installing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) which has shown
an exemplary grasp of key issues and a deep concern for public interest. Today,
India has among the lowest telephone rates in the world and a service that
reaches some of the remotest parts of the country.
We already have regulation of the education sector. Now let
us have regulation that serves. It is time for institutionalising independent
education regulators.
UNQUOTE
If you wish to see the full Annual Report which describes in some detail the work we did during 2013-14, you will find it here.
