Legislate Right to Learn Act

Education policy in India ensures children’s right to sit in classrooms, but not the right to learn. Yet schooling without learning is meaningless and squanders the life-chances of millions of Indian children and jeopardises economic growth. The draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 and associated discussions so far have almost totally ignored the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. But many of its provisions are harming Indian education and pushing learning levels down from the already pitiably low base of 2009. Thus, the most important objective of NEP 2016 should be to nullify the effects of such provisions by legislating a new Right to Learn Act that will supersede the RTE Act. This essay highlights four reforms that are essential for improving education in India. Use the power of incentives to reform public school quality. Section 6 of the RTE Act obligates state governments to establish free-of-charge public schools in all sizeable habitations. However, public schools are emptying due to their perceived low quality. Therefore the legislation is binding states to promote more of the type of schools students are deserting. Since 2010, student enrolment in public (i.e. government) schools countrywide has fallen by 11.3 million while enrolment in private schools has risen by 18.5 million students and the number of ‘small’ government schools (with total enrolment of only 20 or fewer students) has increased to 96,965. The major reason for parents abandoning public schools is insufficient teacher effort (high absence/low time-on-task) and the consequent poor learning outcomes of children, and not high pupil-teacher ratio (since that is only 28:1 as per official DISE data), or lack of trained teachers (public schools have a far higher percentage of certified teachers than private schools) as previously thought. The nub is teacher accountability. Therefore instead of establishing more non-accountable public schools, NEP 2016 needs to promote well-considered public-private-partnerships of the type that have worked elsewhere in the world. Such as voucher schools, since this form of student-directed funding gives schools an intrinsic incentive to provide good education to attract and retain students. Another incentivising tool is to introduce teacher appraisal and a mild form of performance-related pay and promotion. Judge school quality by learning outcomes not by inputs. S.19 of the RTE Act makes it obligatory for state governments to close down private schools that don’t comply with the physical infrastructure and pupil-teacher ratio norms specified. But since s.18 exempts government schools from having to obtain a certificate of recognition, non-compliant public schools aren’t closed down. Moreover, enthusiastic state governments have added a number of other norms and conditions for recognition which are more difficult to comply with, e.g. UP’s government order dated May 8, 2013 notifies about 40 different recognition conditions for private schools. By one estimate, state governments have closed down 4,355 private schools and given closure notices to another 15,083 for non-compliance, threatening the education of nearly 4 million children, according to a National Independent Schools Alliance 2015 report. These schools provide education at…