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NEP 2019 draft: Accountability lacuna

EducationWorld October 2019 | Expert Comment
A sound accountability system can be built by adopting one of two measures — a financing framework where funding follows students or funding public schools on the basis of learning improvements Three years ago in 2016, in a monograph titled New Education Policy: Principles, Priorities & Practices, Centre for Civil Society argued that India needs an education policy that will retain children in school and ensure consistently high learning outcomes. We proposed that the new National Education Policy (NEP) should provide incentives to make the government school system accountable and enable parents to choose the most suitable school for their children. Does the recently released 484-page draft National Education Policy 2019 incorporate these goals? Let’s begin with the goal of improving the performance of government schools. Our government/public school system is beleaguered by lack of accountability. Teachers are absent or when present, engaged with administrative tasks; bad teachers get rewarded and the good are stymied and principals are bereft of autonomy and authority. Parents, who can afford to do so, pull their children out of public schools and enroll them in private schools. In sum, the value derived by the public from funding government schools is abysmally low. To improve the accountability of teachers and school leaders, the appraisal process has to be improved. On this the draft policy promises periodic (annual or higher frequency) performance appraisal of teachers on academic and soft skills competencies. While the proposed process is necessary, it is insufficient. Consequently, even with the numerous checks and balances through multiple appraisers of schools and teachers, learning outcomes of government schools are unlikely to improve. A sound accountability system can be built only by adopting one of two measures — a financing framework where funding follows students, and/or funding public schools on the basis of learning improvements. The draft policy doesn’t recommend either of these measures. While the policy draft intelligently proposes school complexes as the basic unit of governance and has recommended some autonomy enhancing ideas, funds for government schools will continue to flow through old allocative channels. Readily available financing options such as direct benefit transfers, scholarships and vouchers, which will improve institutional accountability, have been given a miss in the draft. Even if allowing funding to follow students as a lever to enforce accountability is too radical, surely funding of public schools can be tied to improved performance? If not all funding, at least some? The draft policy proposes several progressive steps to track learning levels of children through an expansive and flexible assessment framework. However, it stops short of recommending these measures to track the performance of schools and teachers. Instead, it attempts to enforce accountability in government schools by building additional governance that will require many more bureaucrats, but give low returns by way of improved learning outcomes. What of the democratic goal of enabling parental choice and acknowledging their aspirations? The most important stakeholder in school education, next only to children around whose needs and convenience the system ought to be
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