3-prong assault on private schools

With the Central government denying them MSME status, state governments slashing tuition and other fees and parent communities unwilling to pay contracted fees, India’s 450,000 high-performance private schools are under siege – Dilip Thakore  The incubation of the Coronavirus aka Covid-19 virus in the exotic wet meat markets of neighbouring China in November 2019, and its rapid trans-continental transmission for over 15 months has extracted a terrible toll worldwide in terms of lost lives and livelihoods. Even though a vaccine to combat the deadly virus has been developed in record time, Covid-19 has claimed 2.7 million lives around the world and has devastated the economies of over 100 countries forced to declare prolonged industry, business and service sector lockdowns to prevent the spread of this highly infectious airborne virus. Inevitably, given the geographical proximity of the People’s Republic of China to India, Covid-19 has also visited havoc upon the Indian economy and population. Even as reports of a second wave of spikes are coming in from several industry hub states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Punjab — the Coronavirus has infected 11.8 million citizens and taken a toll of 161,000 lives during the past year when arguably the world’s most draconian national lockdown of business, industry and education institutions was declared on March 25, last year. This lockdown has extracted a heavy price from the economy. The country’s GDP which was budgeted to increase by 5 percent to Rs.235.89 lakh crore in the year ended March 31, 2021, is likely to shrink by an unprecedented 17.38 percent to Rs.194.81 lakh crore (revised estimate), and already high unemployment has risen to an estimated 37 million. The severe damage suffered by India Inc and the economy during the pandemic has been extensively researched and the best minds of the country are engaged in devising policies and strategies to repair it. However, the pandemic and year-long closure of all education institutions countrywide has also inflicted heavy and as yet unquantified damage in terms of loss of learning, drop-outs from school and widespread child malnutrition. In particular, 85 million youngest (0-5 age group) children are unable to access nutrition and early childhood education in the country’s 1.6 million government-run anganwadi centres (AWCs) and 132 million children in 1.2 million government primaries are being deprived of their daily free-of-charge mid-day meal. Curiously while entire divisions of economists, business analysts and media pundits have devised detailed strategies to haul industry, business and the economy back on the rails, there is helpless inertia in academia about ideating ways and means to repair the huge loss of learning suffered by the world’s largest child and youth population. This education-focused publication which has repeatedly warned about the silent crisis brewing in Indian education (see EW January-March cover stories on www.educationworld.in) is a lonely voice in the wilderness, ignored not only by unheeding governments at the Centre and states, but also by the academy, parents and educators communities. The dimensions of this brewing crisis in Indian education are mountainous.…