Implicit in this enactment is the obligation assumed by the government to commit all resources required for its implementation. In other words, it laid the foundation for universalisation of school education.

The framers of the RTE Act 2009 considered “access” as one of the most critical parameter for ensuring equity and inclusion in school education. The report on Basic Education in India by the PROBE team in 1999 demonstrated that the major problem in universalising elementary education was not on the demand side, which is the most common alibi of policymakers, but in supply.
It portrayed a dismal, even shameful picture, of dark and dirty classrooms in which little children were crowded together ‘like herds of sheep and goats.’ The PROBE report states 29 per cent of the schools operated in huts, tents and open spaces, 27 per cent schools had one teacher for five classes, and 26 per cent were without a usable blackboard. PROBE also found a depressing child-teacher ratio of 68, unimaginative and uninspiring teaching methods, and even social discrimination and gender bias in the classroom.

The RTE Act ensured availability of neighbourhood school, as specified in the section 6 of the Act, and made appropriate government and local authority duty bound to establish school where it is not established. It didn’t provision only for the physical school in the neighbourhood but ensured every child belonging to the weaker sections and disadvantaged groups are not discriminated [9(c)] including children of migrant families [9(k)].
Besides social and physical access, it sought to make schools functional. It developed norms and standards so that every school is able to impart elementary education, ensuring twin principles of equality and quality for universalization of elementary education.

For ensuring equal access of opportunity to elementary education for all children in the 6-14 age group in the spirit of RTE Act, a process of school mapping (SM) was undertaken by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). SM is a normative approach to the micro planning of school locations. It is an essential planning tool to overcome possibilities of regional inequalities in the provision of educational facilities.
It means that

1. SM incorporates spatial and demographic dimensions into the educational planning process, and
2. Location of educational facilities depends on the norms and standards prescribed by the authorities. 

On the basis of this new schools were established after 2010, based on the model national rules which were framed by MHRD detailing the nuances of access. However, the two timelines of 2013 and 2015 to fully implement the Act lapsed. And now we have the New Education Policy (NEP), seeking to give another direction. 

No doubt, over the last 10 years of RTE, enrolment has improved immensely, particularly of girls, and relatively for children from the marginalised communities. Further, people’s participation in monitoring and engaging with schools has grown manifold and access to schools was almost met in most parts of the country in the last decade.

However, NEP has failed to take note of the above positive trajectory. Instead, it is paving the way for closure of schools in the name of consolidation and rationalisation. This is contravention of the provision of neighbourhood schools in the RTE Act.

Following are the main concerns for NEP, which require to be relooked for realising the right to education of children in the country:

School autonomy

Establishing school complex for effective resourcing and governance turns the question of school autonomy into a myth. NEP apparently has not gone into the far-reaching implications of this recommendation. The idea behind “neighbourhood schools” was to make schools in the community autonomous, managed and governed by the community through school management committees.

The process adopted for rationalisation of schools in Rajasthan is already pushing children from marginalised families, particularly girls, out of school. Alternatively, they are being pushed to low quality private schools, forcing children to walk miles to access schools. These additional infrastructure would only incur additional costs.

Privatisation

Privatisation has been given a high leverage in NEP. For the first time there is no mention of common school system, and private schools and public schools are being discussed on a same plane. Even though it has mentioned that it is against commercialisation of education, and so has increased financial allocation for strengthening public education system, throughout the document, private and public schools have been treated as equal providers of quality education.

It has gone further to override the norms and standards of RTE as benchmarks for regulation of compliance to the RTE Act and wants benchmarks reviewed and appropriate modifications made to enable policy to incorporate improvements. How can a progressive law which makes education a fundamental right be modified? What more appropriate provisions are required than comprehensive norms and standards mentioned in the RTE Act?

Financing

Seeking to move away from the role of the state, NEP has sought to encourage public spirited private schools, even as encouraging philanthropic funding for financing education. NEP should have made the implementation of the 6 percent GDP on education mandatory.

No doubt, suggestions for sizeable increase in the resources for school education in India are welcome, especially the recommendations that “all states allocate 20% of their overall spends to education” and that the “Central government expenditure has to double”. However, this recommendation has many problems.

First of all, a 10-year period to reach the target of 20 percent is too long, particularly when RTE provides for universalization of quality elementary education in five years. Secondly, after the Centre’s 14th Finance Commission funding for the social sector was reduced drastically, there is no evidence to show that there has been substantial increase in the sector at the state level.

Increased public funding should not be dependent on cess and philanthropic funding; it should be the state’s commitment

The document does not spell out how states would be persuaded or obliged to accept and implement this target. Will there be a national legislation for this? Will it be possible to arrive at a consensus on adopting such a legislation? How will the progress towards achieving 20% target be monitored? Increased allocation is not the solution; the state should provide quality education within a time limit to each and every child in the country.

This is particularly critical for increasing number of out of school children in the country. Increased public funding should not be dependent on cess and philanthropic funding; it should be the state’s commitment to provide a certain percentage of GDP (not less than 6%) for quality education of not few but millions of children.

Quality education

NEP’s emphasis on improving learning through ‘learning to learn’ is narrow; it is described as “a skill, or more plausibly as a package of skills, involving study skills, critical analysis, time management, planning, goal setting and so on”. In India learning is not cognitive but systematic concern.

School as a system has not evolved even after 10 years of RTE. The purpose of NEP should have been to make all schools RTE compliant, so that all children are in ‘good schools’, compliant with RTE norms and standards, so that learning becomes possible. However, it doesn’t talk of improving compliance among all the schools, rather it supports closing small neighbourhood schools in the name of consolidation.

One saw this in the Niti Aayog’s shift from ‘inputs’ to ‘outcome’ while defining learning. It presented inputs as antithetical to learning, while experience suggests, RTE compliant schools have been able to contribute to children’s knowledge immensely. It is important to emphasise on inputs, so that children learn to know instead of a narrow focus on learning a set of defined activities.
A new timeline should have been proposed to achieve full RTE compliance and build schools where there are still no schools within the stipulated distance norm of RTE. Peer learning will be possible when school system is ready to teach children. Further, incentivising teachers for better learning outcomes will not help or improve their respect in the society; only autonomy of teachers and strong regulated public education system will.

Skill requirement

NEP has proposed skill requirements for the 21st century regulated on the basis of norms and standards to be developed by a centralised body at the national level. Clearly, learning outcome has been seen through a narrow lense and has failed to understand the values of continuing and comprehensive learning for holistic development. It has reduced education to acquiring certain skills, borrowed heavily from the mandate of low cost budget schools.

It is extremely important to reiterate the importance of universalisation of school education built on equity and quality. It cannot be compromised by coining terms like under-represented groups (URGs) without understanding the nuances of struggle of communiting in asserting their identity, especially when SCs/STs have constitutional status. In this context, calling NEP unconstitutional will not be farfetched.

To conclude, NEP should bring back the narrative of universalisation of education and implement the RTE Act within a new timeline rigorously. NEP should focus on:

• Universalising secondary education. For this purpose, a set of norms have to be established, a large number of schools have to be built, schools are to be equipped, additional teachers are to be recruited and trained,
• Early childhood care and education (ECCE) should be universalised. Pre-primary education ( 3-6 years) has to be integrated with the nearby primary schools. 
• Since RTE has remained largely unimplemented, the first priority should be attached to implementing the Act. Only 12.7 per cent of the elementary schools comply with all the infrastructure requirements laid down in the Act. 

—
*Assistant professor at the Council for Social Development, Delhi, RTE enthusiast

The projected budget allocation for the programme for 2019-20 is estimated to be Rs 34,489 crore, an increase of 10.5% from the 2018-19 budget estimate, according to a medium-term expenditure projection statement presented to parliament in August 2018.

Launched in 2018 by combining Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (‘education for all’), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (‘national middle education mission’) and teachers’ education programmes, Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan aims to provide support for both pre-service and in-service teacher training.

Teacher training is imperative for improving learning outcomes in Indian classrooms, as acknowledged by the Three Years Action Agenda of the government think-tank NITI Aayog, as well as in the 2018 budget speech that emphasised on the need for professionally qualified teachers for school education reform.

Only half of 10- to 11-year-olds in India can read a grade II level text (appropriate for seven- to eight-year-olds), as IndiaSpend reported on January 25, 2019. In rural India, almost half of grade V students cannot read a grade II text and more than 70% them cannot carry out simple division.

Shortage of professionally qualified teachers 
A common feature across the Indian education system is shortage of qualified teachers. Section 23 of the Right to Education Act of 2009 (RTE Act) mandates that all government school teachers should possess minimum qualifications laid down by the National Council of Teacher Education.

Under guidelines released in November 2010, those not qualified were given time until March 31, 2015, to complete their training.
Yet, in 2015-16, of 6.6 million teachers employed at the elementary level, 1.1 million were untrained. Of these, 512,000 were in government and aided schools and 598,000 in private schools.

At the secondary school level, of 2 million teachers, around 14% were not professionally qualified, according to data from the education ministry.

Large proportions of untrained teachers–both at the elementary and the secondary level–exist in West Bengal (40.8%), Bihar (36.6%), Jharkhand (16.5%), Uttar Pradesh (13.2%) and Chhattisgarh (10.5%).

Pre-service teacher training–a neglected component
Teacher training is a continuous process, with pre-service and in-service training being its inseparable components. In March 2017, the central government amended the RTE Act by extending the timeline for teacher training from 2015 to 2019.

The expenditure on strengthening teacher training institutes has increased from Rs 326 crore to Rs 550 crore in the last 10 years. In 2016-17, the central government brought the teacher training programme under the umbrella of National Education Mission (NEM).
Yet, the share of teachers’ education budget in school budget has consistently declined from 1.3% in 2009-10 to 1.1% in 2018-19 (budget estimates), showing that teachers’ training has been accorded low priority.

Source: Union Budget; *Revised estimate, **Budget estimate

The situation is similar in states. Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and West Bengal, states with large numbers of professionally unqualified teachers, are not even spending 1% of their school education budgets on teachers’ training, according to this 2018 study by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability.

After the 14th Finance Commission recommendations, some states such as Bihar and Chhattisgarh increased the share of spending on teachers’ training, yet it remained at 0.001% in Uttar Pradesh and 1.3% in Bihar.

Both the central and state governments have failed to spend enough to create institutional capacity for teacher training, which is resource-intensive. As a result, the District Institutes of Education and Training (DIET), the nodal agencies for teacher training and curriculum development, have failed to fulfil their roles–government data in 2018 showed that more than 35% academic posts in DIETs were vacant.
DIETs’ performance is reflected in the results of the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) for teacher recruitment started in 2011 under the RTE Act. CTET results for 2018 showed that only 17% of 1.7 million candidates qualified as primary school teachers and 15% candidates as middle school teachers.

The private sector has stepped in to meet the growing need for diplomas and undergraduate degrees in elementary education, to the extent that 90% of teacher training institutes in the country today are in the private sector.  

Focus remains on in-service training
Over time, the government has addressed the issue of untrained teachers mostly through in-service teacher training under SSA and RMSA. These centrally-sponsored schemes only provide the running cost for refresher courses, which amounts to as little as Rs 100 per teacher per day under SSA and Rs 300 under RMSA.

The SSA programme itself is severely under-funded, as the education ministry has allocated a small proportion of its committed funds to state governments. For instance, in 2016-17, Rs 46,702 crore were approved but only Rs 22,500 crore actually allocated as the central government’s share of SSA, less than 50% of the approved outlay. The central government’s allocation for the scheme depends, to a large extent, on its collections of education cess. In the last five years, more than 60% of the SSA budget has been financed through this cess.  

Financing Of Elementary Education Through Education Cess, 2014-15 To 2018-19

Source:  Of Hits and Misses, an analysis of Union budget 2018-19, CBGA

The financing of education being dependent on variable collections of cess every year makes the allocation for SSA, and thereby, teacher training uncertain.

(Provita Kundu works with Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability. She can be reached at Protiva@cbgaindia.org)

Courtesy: India Spend