The wrong to education

– Ashish Rajpal, founder and managing director of iDiscoveri/XSEED I am no fan of Gujarat chief minister and BJP prime minister aspirant Narendra Modi. But I have to grudgingly admit he knows how to make a point. During one of his increasingly visible addresses, he said good governance needs action, not Acts. He then went on to persuasively argue that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act) is a prime example of legislation that is wasteful and disregards the issue of implementation. The Constitution already has all the required provisions, supplemented with initiatives such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (education for all) programme, among others to universalise elementary education. Nonetheless, I disagree with him. Both the RTE, in thought, and SSA, in action, are way off the mark and ignore what actually works towards improving school education. But first the facts. The truth is that the so-called India story and its excellent education system has hinged on the success of elites who have done well. This low hanging fruit having been plucked, its becoming abundantly clear that 90 percent of our graduates are unemployable. Double digit growth is more applicable to rape cases per day in the national capital than India’s GDP growth, and despite populist MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act)-economics, the gap bet-ween the rich and poor people and states has widened. There is considerable empirical evidence which links sustained economic growth of a nation to investment in the schooling system (college is too late!). Certainly India’s school system needs reform. If you are unsure about the condition of schooling in India, it wont take you long to make up your mind. While access to schools and enrollment of children (reportedly an impressive 97 percent) has steadily risen since independence, by any other indicator; including the much cited ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) and PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) reports; students learning outcomes are deplorable. The depressing data is topped by grizzly tales of how the majority of class V children cant read class II level texts, how India (represented by our best states) ranked 73 out of 74 countries tested in PISA, and of how in some subjects, our children score half the international average. There is a flight to private schools at all levels of society, and across states. While the government will never admit it, by some estimates over half of India’s children are in private schools. The eyes of successful middle class citizens glaze over when they hear these statistics. There is firm belief that rockbottom learning outcomes is an affliction of the poor in government schools. However, if you wake up to smell the coffee, you’ll discover that even in urban private schools, children are infected by the culture of rote learning, superficial knowledge, and low confidence. Yet the anguish of the middle class is limited to anxiety over having to pull every string to get their toddler admitted into a good…