Indian education system

Paper Leaks and Cancellation of Exams Reveal the Rot in Indian Education System Runs Deeper

In a series of shocking events, the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the education department have again proven their incompetence, leaving students in despair and uncertainty.

From the NEET-UG paper leak to the cancellation of UGC-NET exams, the postponement of NEET-PG exams, and the last-minute rescheduling of Delhi University’s Faculty of Law exams, the mishandling of these exams has reached an intolerable peak. It’s time to hold the responsible authorities accountable for these failures.

There is one question that emerges from all the mismanagement and unaccountability: who is paying the cost?

NEET-UG paper leak: A breach of trust

The NEET-UG paper leak is not just a mishap; it is a betrayal of trust. Students across the country dedicate months, even years, to prepare for this examination, only to have their efforts rendered meaningless by the NTA’s inability to secure the exam papers.

According to the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), the suicide rate among students reached 7.6% in 2022. We often come across reports of student suicides in major coaching cities like Kota in Rajasthan, where students spend their youth preparing for competitive exams. They stay far from their homes, disconnecting from parental bonds, and carrying an emotional burden, hoping to return home with pride after fighting the battle of academics. All those hopes, hard work, and dreams have gone in vain.

Also read: Ranjit Don, Mastermind of Pre-Online Exam Paper Leak Scandals, Has Close Ties With NDA Leaders

It’s not about identifying the culprit or how strictly the government takes action; the question is how it happened in the first place. This must be the last instance of such negligence. The repercussions of this leak are profound, shaking the foundation of fairness and integrity that our education system is supposed to uphold.

The NTA’s incompetence has once again dashed the hopes of thousands of aspiring doctors, leaving their futures hanging in the balance. There have been a few arrests made from different states and a syndicate of a group of people, popularly known as the “solver gang” has been unmasked by the investigating agencies.

The National Testing Agency (NTA) conducted a press conference to address concerns related to the NEET examination held this year. Photo: X/@PIB_India

The Central Bureau of Investigation has been tasked with investigating the paper leak and in total 11 arrests have been made from various states such as Bihar and Jharkhand with six FIRs registered so far. Even the Supreme Court in its hearing on July 8 accepted the fact that the examination was compromised in contrast to the statement made by the Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan in June.

UGC-NET: An unjust cancellation

The abrupt cancellation of the UGC-NET exams is another testament to the NTA’s mismanagement. Students who have prepared for this gateway to academia and research are left without any valid explanation or apology.

The cancellation reflects a disregard for the aspirations and hard work of countless individuals. The education department’s failure to conduct the exams as scheduled shows a lack of planning and accountability that cannot be overlooked. The state is oblivious to the effort – mentally, emotionally, and financially – it takes for a scholar to prepare for that examination.

The ministry of education has stated that the examination integrity might have been compromised and it was decided to hold the examination again. Even in this case, the CBI has been tasked to investigate the matter. In response to the opprobrium faced by the ministry of education and NTA, it was announced by the education minister on June 21 that a committee of experts will be formed to strengthen the NTA and all the complicit will be held accountable.

NEET PG: A never-ending ordeal

The postponement of NEET-PG exams adds another layer of frustration to an already convoluted situation. It was notified on the day of the examination, leaving all the students perplexed. Candidates booked air and rail tickets in advance, took leave from their jobs and internships, and travelled hundreds of kilometres, only to witness their hopes and dreams shattered without any clarification.

Aspiring postgraduate medical students are forced into limbo, their careers stalled due to the NTA’s repeated postponements. The uncertainty and anxiety caused by these delays are detrimental to the mental health and professional futures of these students.

The continuous rescheduling signifies a lack of preparedness and respect for the candidates’ time and dedication. According to the version of the ministry of health and family welfare, the examination was deferred as a “precautionary measure”, due to alleged irregularities. Following in the same footsteps, it was mentioned that the CBI will investigate the discrepancies. A thorough assessment has been announced by the ministry of health of the examination, which is conducted by the National Board of Examination (NBE).

Also read: Watch | Shattered Dreams and Betrayal: The Inside Story of A NEET Aspirant

Faculty of Law, University of Delhi: The politics of postponement

Perhaps the most scandalous of all is the postponement of the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi exams, announced just one night before they were to commence. The reason? No one is aware of it. It seems to an order of the day to postpone the exam a night before.

The vice-chancellor has not given any reason except that there was a shortage of attendance among students, which could have led to a loss of a year for them. This act of impromptu announcement compels us to have a closer look at favouritism and corruption.

It is an affront to every student who has studied tirelessly for these exams. It is a clear indication that our education system is compromised and manipulated by those in power to serve their interests while honest, hardworking students are left to suffer the consequences.

Students who got admission to LLM programmes domestically and abroad had to suffer the most, they worked tirelessly to secure admissions in various universities, and due to such postponement, everyone seems to be bewildered and lost. Students who received jobs offers will have to postpone their joining dates, frustrating the recruiters. Around 9,000 students from the faculty will bear the brunt of these actions.

Rejecting regression : Manusmriti and the plight of future lawyers

Introducing the Manusmriti, an ancient Hindu legal text notorious for its regressive and discriminatory provisions, to students at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University is not just misguided but outright harmful. This text, deeply rooted in archaic social norms, propagates abhorrent practices that undermine the principles of equality and justice. By endorsing such a document, the university risks indoctrinating future lawyers with archaic notions of caste hierarchy, gender discrimination, and social injustice.

The Manusmriti sanctions inequalities based on birth, prescribing unequal treatment for individuals based on their caste and gender. It perpetuates a system where certain groups are deemed inherently superior or inferior, reinforcing prejudices that have no place in modern legal education of India. By exposing students to such teachings, the university fails in its duty to foster a progressive understanding of law that upholds human dignity and equality before the law.

Legal education should empower students to challenge injustice and promote societal progress. Introducing the Manusmriti not only contradicts this goal but also risks legitimising discriminatory practices in the name of tradition. It sends a dangerous message that regressive social norms should inform legal reasoning, rather than principles grounded in constitutional morality and human rights.

Furthermore, the Manusmriti is incompatible with India’s constitutional values, which strive to eliminate discrimination and ensure equal rights for all citizens. By promoting this text, the university undermines the very foundations of a secular, democratic society where every individual is entitled to equal protection under the law.

Accountability?

These incidents make us feel like the whole education system is falling like a house of cards. The consistent failures and irregularities in these exams are not mere accidents; they are the result of mismanagement and a lack of accountability within the NTA and the education department. It is high time these bodies are held responsible for their actions. The repeated disruptions and mismanagement have undermined the credibility of our education system, leaving students disillusioned.

After facing harsh opprobrium from all sides, especially from students and the opposition, the NTA decided to call for suggestions from the parents of students to restructure the organisation in the name of accountability. It is rather amusing to see how our National Testing Agency has become – an agency responsible for conducting almost all major competitive exams on a national level – that it has dropped its armoury and is now seeking suggestions from the parents. Instead of providing answers for its failure, it turns into a suggestion-seeking agency, aiming to shape itself as per the interests of those it serves, to ameliorate its image.

It is not just the NTA failing to do its job, organisations like National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) are continuously changing the syllabus for social sciences and do not want students to learn about riots. Such riots had a deep impact on the lives of our citizens and have shaped the political, social, economic, and psychological behaviour of the states and citizens. Rather, NCERT in the name of the well-being of students, and a positive, non-violent environment, does not want students to know even contemporary events let alone modern history. Not only in colleges and competitive exams, but even at the school level the rot and manipulation are undeniable.

Merely providing punishments to the accused and those involved would not suffice for all the students who have suffered and lost their hopes. Major incidents like these compel us to examine the organisational structure and necessary changes required to make it reliable.

If structural changes are not implemented, individuals behind bars or on the run, along with others, could exploit loopholes through corruption or technical skills to compromise examination integrity. Without reforms, this cycle of chor-police will continue to persist, leaving students vulnerable to further suffering.

States like Tamil Nadu have passed resolutions in their assemblies to scrap the NEET examination and revert to previous methods. The central authorities must regain the trust of such states during these turbulent times and thoroughly scrutinise the organization at a detailed level.

The authorities concerned should adhere to principles of transparency and accountability, and must take immediate corrective actions. The future of our students and the integrity of our education system are in jeopardy. Authorities must answer for their failures and take measures to prevent such mishandling in the future. This is not just a plea for justice; it is a demand for the fundamental right to a fair and dependable education system. The students of India deserve better, and it is time for the authorities to deliver. Finally, after considering all the facts, one must ask: who is bearing the cost?

Saawarni Sharma and Sreejayaa Rajguru are law students.

What Are the Alternatives to MCQs for PhD Admissions

There is evidence suggesting that multiple choice questions, or MCQ exam scores, do not correlate with research outcomes or rates of completing a PhD.

Almost every PhD programme in the country requires MCQ-based tests as a first step for admissions.

In an attempt to centralise the eligibility criteria, the University Grants Commission (UGC) recently declared that the National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) could be used for all PhD admissions.

It is still unclear if these new considerations also apply to the CSIR UGC NET, which caters to science subjects.

The notice brings to life a three-tiered qualification: Category 1 is eligible for PhD admissions, lectureship and a Junior Research Fellowship. Category 2 does not get the fellowship but is eligible for the other two, and finally, Category 3 is eligible only for PhD admissions.

Nearly 35,000 scholars receive “non-NET” fellowships of a meagre Rs 8,000 per month. There are more who do not get any fellowships at all. Most of these scholars would fall in the second and third categories in the future. The notice also says that 70% consideration will be given to the NET score and 30% to an interview.

Marginalisation

There is evidence suggesting that multiple choice questions, or MCQ exam scores, do not correlate with research outcomes or rates of completing a PhD.

The “subject-GRE” is an exam used for admissions to PhDs in the US, similar in spirit to the NET and its brethren.

Using data from physics PhD admissions, Dr. Casey Miller et al. were able to show that not only GRE scores fail to predict completion of a PhD, but they also restrict access to enrollment of marginalised groups.

This has led a large number of American PhD programmes to make the GRE exam optional or completely redundant.

MCQ tests also have gendered outcomes. The research says that such exams show bias against women during the selection for the Olympiads both in Australia and India.

However, there haven’t been extensive studies on how these results intersect with and exacerbate other relevant factors in Indian academia, such as caste, language, and socioeconomics, which educationists should investigate further.

When an exam is given 70% weightage, such as MCQs, that enables candidates to opt for expensive private coaching classes to enhance their strategic test-taking skills and acquire topical knowledge or problem-solving abilities. And this shifts the focus away from teaching and coursework at universities.

Topical specificity for PhDs in languages, cultural studies, interdisciplinary topics is an issue as they do not have subject specific exams, and students have to study for an exam completely out of their area of specialisation to meet admission criteria.

What could be done?

The question frequently posed in this discourse is: how do institutes filter candidates “objectively” when thousands of applicants apply for only a handful of positions?

As mentioned earlier, MCQs aren’t an objective metric for anything to do with the outcomes of a PhD and may actually introduce significant bias.

Firstly, MCQ exams need to be fundamentally reconsidered.

Some major research institutes in India, like the Chennai Mathematical Institute, do not rely on MCQ exams as their first filter for PhD candidate selection. Till a few years ago, they had a written test with five longform problems to work on, encouraging slower and more deliberate thoughts.

Similarly, a portion of the annual cohort admitted to institutes like the National Center for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) and the International Center for Theoretical Sciences come through their summer research programmes, where research interns are interviewed directly for PhD positions.

Interestingly, as per the data reported by professor Nissim Kanekar, the gender ratio of students selected through this intake is more balanced as compared to that which comes through MCQ exams at NCRA.

An alternative to MCQ exams for applying to PhD programmes at IIT Bombay is having two years of professional experience. This option provides a pathway for students who couldn’t pursue unstable research careers right after college due to various socioeconomic pressures.

Many IITs and IISERs relax the MCQ exam criteria for students from certain centrally funded institutes with a CGPA of 8 or above. However, this privilege is not typically extended to most university graduates.

Therefore, institutes can offer to conduct a subjective test or request relevant research or professional experience or have a grade threshold for the PhD candidate selection process. They can also have an optional MCQ exam score.

It is also important to acknowledge where MCQ exams might be relevant; they provide a path for people who have qualifying degrees with significantly different coursework or poor grades or need to display proficiency in the topic for some other reason. Therefore, they can absolutely be an optional criterion the student chooses to be evaluated on.

Each of the above, or a combination thereof, could be a choice the candidate makes to be evaluated by for the first filter.

There are widespread reports from RTI filings that institutes flout reservation rules during PhD admissions and enable systemic discrimination during interviews. Some are even exempt from having reservations by being institutes for national importance, leading to poor representation in the student pool.

Making sure that reservation policies are not disregarded at any step of the process is paramount. The diversity of selection criteria becomes meaningless if these policies are not upheld.

Access to knowledge creation

The above approach can be implemented with very little extra resources, while maintaining institutional autonomy and unique research character.

However, it does not address the precarity which is at the root of this issue.

Considering the cutthroat competition involved in entrance tests and half of all scholars working with meagre to no wages, there is a clear unmet demand. Even in a pragmatic neoliberal framework, India spends less than a percent of its GDP on research, two to three times less than comparable economies. Economies which invest in research and train PhDs get large returns on their investment.

Research groups need to be cultivated and funded. Their numbers need to be expanded at smaller public state universities and colleges. The inequality between per capita expenditure of state universities and national institutes on research is huge, especially considering the asymmetry in the number of students enrolled.

All scholars need to be given a living wage, regardless of the institute they belong to.

Research is not perceived as labour in our economy. PhD scholars can have some respite in collective bargaining by associating themselves with trade or workplace unions. This has found significant success in the US in the recent past. Working within teachers and students’ unions is also viable.

There is evidence suggesting that diverse groups with disparate backgrounds and abilities working together in academia leads to better research outcomes.

The natural and social universes are complex systems which require multiple approaches and lived experiences to be understood. The current path to a PhD does not reflect that, nor does it select for a broad range of abilities.

Moreover, given that know-how is central to civilisation, representation and access to knowledge creation become matters of justice. Much of modern academia revolves around the PhD, making it an opportune starting point for addressing structural issues

Neel Kohle is a PhD candidate in Astrophysics at Paris Observatory and has been part of mutual aid groups helping students navigate research careers in India.

Charting the Rise and Fall of Byju’s, a New Book Explores India’s Educational Ecosystem

Pradip Saha’s latest book ‘The Learning Trap – How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride’ is an uncommon investigative treatise into India’s education system.

Serious and detailed media investigations into the education sector are unfortunately rare – this is at great cost to hundreds of millions of middle-class parents and students. Indeed, much media seems dependent on large, full-page advertisements of all manners issued by universities, educational technologies, and tuition centres. There is clearly little appetite to bite the hand that feeds. In this context, it is heartening to read Pradip K Saha’s book, The Learning Trap – How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride (Juggernaut, 2023).

Pradeep K Saha’s The Learning Trap – How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride. Publisher: Juggernaut, 2023.

Saha charts the rise of a charismatic teacher to a status where he (and his family, who held controlling roles in the company) were clearly out of their depth, especially in financial matters. By the end, there seems little doubt that there is rampant denial and fraud, alongside the financial heartbreak of so many families and young men and women. The scepticism of these families toward education technology will likely never be allayed.

Saha quotes many heart-breaking stories of how low-income families (such as even auto rickshaw drivers) were exploited – some were denied refunds, and a lack of understanding of online subscriptions caused many families to bleed money, and end up in debt traps.

Equally, what is most useful about Saha’s book is that it speaks to the larger educational milieu of India. As written, most media hardly investigate education. This is in tune with the larger fawning business media landscape over India’s economic prowess. Misunderstandings regarding education are rather more significant than fraudulent practices in say, a food-delivery app. The very idea that an education app can do so much – no less than transform your life – is itself unquestioned in our endless faith in technology.

When the media does cover education it is mostly to bemoan the fact that Indian universities rarely feature in the list of best in the world. There is thus a stark contradiction – on the one hand, a certain segment may indeed bemoan this but on the other hand, it is simply taken for granted, as Saha writes, that the IIT-JEE or NEET or UPSC dream is only natural for India.

Also read: ‘Treated Like Slaves, Abusive Practices’: Byju’s Staff Reveal Harsh Work Conditions

One of the chief reasons that Indian universities – even the lauded ones – do not do well in rankings is that the admission process is designed to exclude. Entrance exams are choke points – their design is fundamental. A truly good university would have a broad-based entrance process that looks at the full potential of a student – this is why top international universities insist on many dimensions. Not just test scores, but personal essays, fuller CVs of achievements and individual projects, interviews, etc. Indian universities are rarely willing to spend resources to hire trained admission teams – it is simply seen as an expense in both private and public sector universities. Most public universities would rather save, and most private universities would rather spend money on more direct marketing. It is in this choke point that the test prep industry thrives.

There is little trust in institutions – indeed, especially in the top ones – and hence it is convenient for everyone to simply look at a number in a single test – so-called “merit”. This deeply damaged ecosystem is where apps like Byjus (and many others) thrive. Indeed, there is little discussion on how to make the debilitated school system more robust so that these technologies/centers can at best provide a supplementary role – of making learning more engaging and deeper. Rather, the school system – especially its evaluation sub-system – is not held accountable at all, and the boards only ruthlessly homogenise in their evaluations.

Companies like Byju’s, as Saha notes, had initially tried to make learning genuinely more engaging with animations and visualisations, and it is easy to believe that at one point Raveendran must have been a sincere teacher sharing his joy. The problem remains that if everything is anyway geared toward a few scores in a few exams, there is little learning – among other things, learning cannot happen in this atmosphere of high anxiety.

The system is geared toward the test-giving authority being able to plausibly claim that it is not biased – thus many of the elements of these tests have nothing to do with learning (or creativity), but entirely to do with irrelevant skills such as being able to do a problem with tricks that increase speed. It is in these hacks that these edtechs thrive – deeper learning is sacrificed. It is the destruction of this learning at this crucial age that will then make it difficult for these students to ever think creatively. Is it any wonder then that this pool of students, and the faculty that has to accommodate this, can no longer hope to do serious Nobel Prize winning work, and have to go abroad if they have any such inclination. This indeed is a large part of the answer to why no Indian universities feature at the top of the rankings – college years are spent simply cleaning up the learning-loss of the admission process.

Even more urgent than rankings is the thought that all our doctors, engineers, and civil servants also come through such a compromised system.

One is grateful to Saha for these uncommon book-length explorations of the educational ecosystem and its sometimes bizarre manifestations – there is a need for many more such extended, critical explorations. Recently, far more laudatory books – such as Nistha Tripathi’s Unstartup – while providing useful context, for the most part simply reproduce the self-image of the founders and those who have a direct financial stake in these technologies. One is however glad for all these books – they teach us that there are no easy lessons, and that all stakeholders – students, parents, technologies, and universities – must all be thoughtfully invested in the task of rethinking education and careers.

Nikhil Govind is a Professor and Head of the Manipal Centre for Humanities.

Book Review: A Peek Into Krishnamurti Schools and a Different Approach to Learning

Ashwin Prabhu’s book on Krishnamurti schools raises some concerns through its omissions.

For generations, education has been a subject for public discourse but little of what has been written relates to it. Most books, lectures and policy documents promote competition, valourise a certain idea of success, and foreground the needs of the economy. Education is a tool to achieve these indoctrinated ends.

Schools are glorified coaching centres, teachers, examiners and students, members of a future labour force. In an environment where this method of schooling has been accepted as a necessity, challenging it has not been easy. Change that has been brought in without questioning or disturbing this normative is just performative superficial tinkering.

‘Classroom with a View’ by Ashwin Prabhu (Published by Tara Books).

Schools founded by the philosopher J. Krishnamurti and those that follow similar lines of thinking have sought to take an independent path, a route where learning and not education is key. Despite having had to remain within the enforced examination system, they have found ways of creating a space for learning that allows for reflection, curiosity, questioning, inquiry, connectedness and sensitivity. For decades, they have nurtured an environment that allow children and teachers to learn together and share with freedom.

As someone who studied in a Krishnamurti school and remain connected as an alumnus and parent, I am aware of many of their thoughtful initiatives. But it is true that to the outside world, Krishnamurti schools have remained an incomprehensible and disconnected bubble. Classroom with a View authored by Ashwin Prabhu is important because it lifts the veil off their classroom.

The book’s elegance lies in the way it goes about describing the happenings within Krishnamurti schools. At no point is it preachy or self-indulgent. Prabhu simply presents contexts, experiences, learnings and unlearning that have emerged. He is not the sole or dominant voice in the book. Though his personal experiences as a teacher in a Krishnamurti school find place in the narrative, Prabhu remains a sutradhar and observer. There is no attempt to force any specific kind of understanding from the processes that are delineated. The book is, in essence, a collection of stories shared by teachers, students and school principals from across Krishnamurti schools.

Giving children time and the space to watch a sunset, observe an insect or just walk amidst nature may seem innocuous, even irrelevant to education but, as Prabhu has shown, they are foundational to being able to learn. And not just learn, but learn with discernment and passion. But this is not easy. Since the outside world considers these activities as ‘wasting time,’ pause needs to be cultivated in order to enter that mindful frame.

Similarly, learning has been taken out, beyond the walls of a classroom. Through in-school community work, which includes washing dishes and working in the garden, making children meet, talk to and understand the community around the school campus, field trips that involve social, cultural, environmental learning or just sitting together at assemblies and singing songs that embody various faiths and ways of living, these schools make every moment precious.

But is this education? That might be the question from an onlooker. Where is mathematics, physics and economics in all this. By not being bogged down by ‘subjects,’ this book sends an important message.

Learning is not about studying subjects. Learning happens when the mind is sensitive and all a school needs to do is create possibilities for that sensitivity and acute attentiveness to open. But Prabhu does not stop there; he engages with the way teachers have made the classroom an active place, where no child is passively receiving information neither is the subject matter being doled out. And theatre, music, dance and poetry are central to learning and studying. They are not extra-curricular activities.

Also read: Bhagavad Gita in Schools: Rote Learning of Illiberal Theological Text Will Trump Rational Inquiry

A missing piece

In today’s world where anger and hate dominate our mind, ‘togetherness’ is so necessary. Togetherness happens in many ways, in just being together, working together in groups and listening to one another as equals. No one is all knowing, especially the teacher. Krishnamurti schools empower teachers to be vulnerable. I say empower purposefully because the school gives the teacher the confidence to say “I don’t know.”

But schools are not about just students and teachers. In Krishnamurti schools, parents are not occasional visitors, proud parents or worried wards. They are participants, ideating and questioning along with the teachers and students. Prabhu has spoken about how curated conversations and gatherings contribute to the schools.

In the last section he introduces the word that was at the core of Krishnamurti’s thoughts: fear. What do examinations, competition, comparison, punishment and reward do to children? But not stopping with a philosophical rumination, Prabhu elaborates on how Krishnamurti schools have ingeniously subverted these inherently violent paradigms.

But this book also raised some concerns through its omissions. The one word that was not engaged with was ‘struggle.’ There are a few lines here and there about the messiness that appear in schools. But beyond that Prabhu does not discuss the constant grappling. One is not seeking a success or failure report. But there are constant emotional, psychological and structural complexities.

Since these are journeys that never end, not learning about contestations leaves us with a ‘feel good’ sensibility that makes me uncomfortable. In the stories told, there are many voices, but I do not recall reading the words of the cook, gardener or watchman. In a Krishnamurti school, shouldn’t they also be a part of the learning conversations? Maybe they are. But this book does not give us an insight into their minds or their role in these transformations.

In his preface, while speaking of what people think of Krishnamurti schools, Prabhu says, “It was as if the schools were for a certain kind of child, from an elite social context and for whom the ‘alternative’ was an option.” Unfortunately, there is no attempt to address this concern. A concern that I believe is legitimate. It cannot be denied that in conception and attitude the Krishnamurti schools are elite. Elitism is not merely about economy; it is in the culture. A culture may seem inclusive but, when it does not address those unseen lines that are communicated through language and temporality, it remains exclusive. Maybe this is not the book that needs to take up this question, but it is a missing piece.

Prabhu does not set the various Krishnamurti schools within their cultural context. Each is very different with some specific battles. For example, the social challenges faced by the people of the Rajghat school are different from most other Krishnamurti schools. Some insight here would have helped us understand the practices better.

Similarly, I would have liked to know more about parent-teacher conversations beyond the thematic sessions. Often parents, despite sending their children to a Krishnamurti school, have opposite notions of education and society. Children struggle with these contradictions that remain unresolved. This forces them to behave according to the requirements of each environment. Play acting in both situations!

I will end with the one story that truly bothered me. This was with regard to the Rural Education Centre situated just outside Rishi Valley School, which caters to children from surrounding villages.

To begin with, both schools are situated in a rural setting but only one is tagged as ‘rural.’ This is not just a question of semantics; it indicates a frame of mind. Leaving that aside, the story speaks about how relationships were built between students of both institutions and the complex social questions that were raised by children themselves.

This is one of the very few times Prabhu speaks very directly of privilege and social hierarchy. Yet, when he gives space for responses from students and teachers, we find that they are all from the Rishi Valley School. Not one voice was from a student of the Rural Education Centre.

T.M. Krishna is a musician, author and activist.

Will a Common Undergrad Entrance Test Fix the Problems of India’s Education System?

The common entrance exam will determine the experience of learning, especially in schools with limited resources, rather than addressing issues of access, equity and social justice.

The announcement of the Common Undergraduate Entrance Test (CUET) by the University Grants Commission (UGC), although disappointing, should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the trajectory of the Indian education system, its enhanced status in a globalised economy since the 1990s, and the zeal with which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, since it assumed power in 2014, and especially after 2019, has set about reforming the sector.

The role that education was meant to play in the constitutional commitment to social justice and equity, placed it in a somewhat privileged position in the years following independence, although financial commitment and on-the-ground implementation – especially for the school sector – never matched the rhetoric of successive governments. The structural adjustment programmes of the early 1990s that led to a liberalisation of the economy dealt a major blow to the social sector with serious consequences for education and health as privatisation under various guises began to be encouraged.

Despite the ambiguities surrounding their promises of social justice, the UPA governments did not entirely and openly discard responsibility for the provision of public education, and measures to compensate for the diminishing role of the State were sporadically initiated and instituted. Among these were schemes such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All), a major revision of the school curriculum in the form of the New Curricular framework (NCF) 2005, and most importantly the passing of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (the RTE Act) 2009, that was able to provide some guarantees of a minimum quality of education for the most economically and socially vulnerable of our children.

Also read: The NEP Goes Against the Existing Constitutional Mandate of the RTE

Since 2014, however, even as greater controls at every level of education began to be exercised, the responsibility for public provision has been systematically and severely compromised. Although budgetary allocations have never met the suggested 6% of GDP figure under any government since independence, the Narendra Modi government has beaten all records and it now hovers at a mere 3%.

The New Education Policy (NEP) of 2019 has opened up unprecedented ways of allowing private players to take over the system by introducing a slew of flexible measures that sound impressive but will seriously affect education of children for whom public provision is critical. Other disquieting measures include the side-stepping of the RTE Act of 2009; reduced allocations to child-related programmes such as the ICDS and the mid-day meal scheme (40% reduction in real terms for both schemes); and drastic reduction or outright elimination in funding schemes for tribal communities and scheduled castes.

All this comes with plans to invest in digital education, virtual laboratories, television programmes and simulated learning environments, even as the pandemic and closure of schools provides us with robust and mounting evidence of the catastrophic consequences of online learning for the poor and the marginalised. Education is now openly and unabashedly meant to serve a neo-liberal economic and social agenda and the announcement of the CUET is one more step in that direction.

The CUET is projected as a “bias-free” test that gives every child an equal chance of entering college, irrespective of the school system or state board affiliations as well as of social and cultural privilege. On the face of it, the argument is appealing and fits in with the popular meritocracy hypothesis. The assumption here is that given a more or less equivalent syllabus and the benefit of 12 years of schooling, chances of success or failure in a final and summative assessment be it the CBSE, a state board examination or now the common entrance exam, are determined by each child’s capacity, hard work and effort. The onus of success is on the child and the family.

The reality, however, is more complex and the subtle ways in which seemingly equal opportunities are in fact not at all equal, are not always obvious. In India, a hierarchical system of schooling that corresponds with children’s social and material status reproduces, rather than erases, discrimination and exclusion, rendering the competition for college admissions unfair and already biased. Considering the available evidence on high-stakes testing, it is highly likely that children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and poorly funded schools will lose out on more than just a college admission.

That this one-time achievement-based multiple choice question (MCQ) test will override all other assessments, including teacher evaluation, is particularly distressing for a large community of academics, educationists, administrators, parents and other groups, who have been involved in a campaign and a long but slowly evolving programme to transform the experience of schooling in India. This effort has been aimed at liberating the educational experience from the traditionally mind-numbing process of imbibing vast amounts of information – geared primarily towards passing examinations – to an experience of development and learning that rewards and nurtures children’s curiosity, spontaneity, and creativity with the ultimate goal of imbibing meaningful knowledge in a genuine attempt to understand, analyse and negotiate the physical and social world around them.

Underlying these attempts is an acute awareness of the structural constraints of class, caste, religion, gender, etc. that disenfranchise and marginalise children within an extremely stratified hierarchical system of schooling that eventually determines transition and representation in higher education.

Also read: Explainer: What We Know About UGC’s Common Entrance Test for Undergrad Admissions

Given the rising levels of unemployment, poverty, economic distress and lack of opportunity, schooling and education continue to be invested with the power to fulfil aspirations of social and economic mobility.

Dedicated teachers in a variety of settings around the country, especially those in government schools, with extremely limited infrastructure and resources, are struggling to do so within the confined spaces of the classroom and sometimes of the school. Any serious effort at reform at this juncture should have aimed at acknowledging these struggles and the shortcomings of the system that necessitate them. The message that the CUET sends is that none of this matters any more, and that structural disadvantage will not be recognised.

While not changing much on the ground, the common entrance exam will certainly make a laborious process of admission to undergraduate courses more streamlined and transparent, rather than addressing issues of access, equity and social justice that are eroding the education system. Uncomfortable questions such as why access to quality undergraduate education should not be available to all children who complete schooling and desire to enrol for higher education, or why there is a dearth of equally desirable alternative options are needed to be addressed.

The CUET is likely to provide little space for serious and engaged thinking, critical reflection or analysis, and will force schools to create learning spaces where students are assisted in cramming information and content that will be determined through processes over which they have little control.

In short, the content of the test will determine the experience of learning, especially in schools with limited resources, and parents in desperation will turn to coaching centres and their expertise as the competition increases. This extremely high-stake test is likely to undermine the school experience of children of all social groups, but its impact will surely be most devastating for the poor and the most marginalised.

Farida Abdulla Khan is a former professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia.

‘I Will Explain Them’: How the Culture of Telling Hurts Government Schools

The grammatically flawed phrase ‘I will explain them’ foreshadows why progressive educational programmes and policies in government schools may fail.

This article was originally published on The Wire Science, our website dedicated to science, health and environment reportage and analysis. Follow, read and share.

“I will explain them,” said Kanulal, a headmaster and master-trainer of his strategy to train 20 other headmasters. Kanulal had just participated in a five-day training workshop on instructional leadership, led by two school leadership experts. Now it was his task to disseminate what he had learnt to other government school principals in Raigad.

The year was 2014 and I was observing the school leadership development training programme. Three days ago, I felt a sense of déjà vu when Avnita, a master-trainer in Goa, presented a slide on design thinking to communicate her strategy to train other principals and said, “I will explain them.”

The grammatically flawed phrase “I will explain them” is a metaphor that explores how progressive educational programmes and policies are expected to find their way into government school classrooms through training sessions and why they may fail.

Despite the wisdom behind the progressive programmes and policies, the passion of those who want to see them implemented well and the large investments of time and energy, these training programmes rarely improve government school system capacity in a sustainable way.

Also read: To Surmount India’s ‘Learning Crisis’, Constitutionalism Must Be Part of All Learning

Why? Because “I will explain them” constitutes and represents the overemphasis on telling, the relative absence of know-whys, and the futility of a rapid delivery approach to improve teaching and leading in schools.

Overemphasis on telling

“I will explain them” is underpinned by telling and the oral transmission of knowledge. India has a rich oral tradition whose echoes continue to resonate in our educational system.

The Hindi word ‘shiksha’ is rooted in Sanskrit and prioritises correct pronunciation. A teacher saying something and the student repeating it sound for sound remains one of the oldest methods of teaching. Even today, when passing by a classroom, one might hear a teacher reciting multiplication tables and the students repeating them verbatim. A school’s morning assembly often demands repeating prayers, pledges and anthems over understanding their essence.

Conceptually, knowledge through such oral transmission implies that learners have no agency to create knowledge of their own, that they are empty vessels and that repeating the phrase will ‘fill’ them with knowledge. When a training programme or curriculum is ‘delivered’, it subtly reinforces the idea that knowledge is like a product that can pass unadulterated from the teacher’s or trainer’s mind to that of the learner.

Such knowledge delivery is the opposite of education which, according to linguist Noam Chomsky, is the act of educing from the learner. The way Kanulal and Avnita intend “I will explain them” has little emphasis on such drawing out.

Absence of whys

The telling that occurs through “I will explain them” leans towards whats and hows but places little emphasis on elaborating the whys. For example, a training session on instructional leadership will define what instructional leadership is and how one may enact it. A classroom session on geometry is likely to focus on what Pythagoras theorem is and how to use it.

Even teacher-principal interactions in schools are almost always devoid of the whys. What “I will explain them” misses is a discussion, debate or activity that creates knowledge of why instructional leadership will work in the life of a principal overwhelmed by administration or why the Pythagoras theorem is necessary for a certain kind of mathematical thinking.

It is not surprising, therefore, that knowledge from such teaching or training remains superficial. We may be able to prove a theorem, define a formula and recite important dates – but we seldom know why we must.

The government hostels were originally established to make it easier for rural students to access higher education.

Representational image. Photo: akshayapatra/pixabay

Rushed mastery

“I will explain them” occurs frequently in training sessions because it is often the easiest display of mastery. When training other principals, Kanulal will present the slide on instructional leadership, read out a definition and provide one or two examples that he has heard from the experts during his training.

Although experts suggest those examples to instruct, Kanulal repeats the examples to show that he knows his stuff. It has taken an expert about 10,000 hours of experience with multiple cases, close observations, reading and writing to understand the practical and conceptual nuances of instructional leadership. It is unfair to expect anyone to grasp it in five days of rushed training.

To be fair, when asked in private, Kanulal admitted he is still figuring out the various dimensions of instructional leadership. But admitting that will disqualify his master-trainer status in our institutions.

The irony here is that incomplete mastery is institutionally accepted in a system that is ostensibly designed to teach mastery. But such mastery is also considered normal. After all, the programme must be scaled rapidly to all schools – so, like it or not, it must be transmitted often through those who are still novices.

Also read: Rethinking Education in India to Merge Reality on the ‘Streets’ with Formal Schooling

Building on these three points, I would suggest that the word “explain” in the phrase “I will explain them” is deceptive and an incorrect substitute for the word “tell”. Instead, “I will tell them” is simpler and more accurate. When Kanulal and Avnita train other principals and teachers, they tell them their preliminary and evolving understanding of complex concepts, such as instructional leadership or activity-based learning.

Since telling remains the predominant mode of communication, it will be garbled by the time it reaches the classroom just like in a game of Chinese whispers.

How then do we build capacity without oral transmission? Instead of telling what we should do, I suggest three questions and propose a few ideas:

1. Are we telling or are we educing? Do we respect learners to be co-creators of knowledge? For example, instead of telling the definition of instructional leadership, we can ask principals to describe and share examples of how they lead, guide or avoid classroom instruction.

When we draw out their experience, we are likely to find that they practice their own flavour of instructional leadership or have strong reasons for why it is not part of an administrator’s job. Also, changing the mode of interaction by using dynamic artifacts, such as whiteboards and flip charts, might reduce the verbal chatter.

Activities that involve creating comparison tables, diagrams, and mindmaps may be more useful than passively watching presentation slides.

2. What about other approaches to build capacity? Would mentoring and coaching provide a deeper, more nuanced understanding of complex ideas and lead to true mastery? Theatre and arts may provide the necessary pauses for self-reflection and building knowledge.

Another option is to use action research projects to experiment new ideas and write case studies that become etched into professional memory.

3. What about incorporating the whys? Training programmes mandated from the top are resisted because people do not know why they participate. Making the whys clear is often useful to highlight existing knowledge gaps, educational dilemmas and wicked problems that the policy makers are trying to address.

***

In sum, building professional capacity and expertise must not be a rushed process executed through freshly trained master-trainers. Unless our training sessions stop reproducing the “I will explain them” culture and instead consider that teachers and principals are active agents in constructing knowledge, authentic mastery is unlikely.

Yes, our rich culture of oral transmission serves well when chanting scripts, but it does not develop expertise in complex teaching-learning concepts and skills. We need to ask this question for the 1.5 million school principals, 8.5 million teachers and over 100 million students in our government schools.

Gopal Midha holds a PhD in educational leadership from the University of Virginia. He is currently setting up a Center for Research on School Leadership in Goa.

TN Assembly Passes Resolution Urging Centre to Withdraw CUET

The assembly said the CUET would sideline school education, undermine overall development-oriented learning in schools, and lead to stress among students and mushrooming of coaching centres.

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Monday, April 11, adopted a resolution urging the Union government to withdraw the proposal to conduct a Common University Entrance Test (CUET), saying like NEET it would sideline school education, undermine overall development-oriented learning in schools, and lead to stress among students and mushrooming of coaching centres.

Barring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which opposed the resolution piloted by chief minister M.K. Stalin and staged a walk-out, it was supported by all the allies of the ruling DMK, including the Congress and Left parties. The principal opposition AIADMK, too supported the move and asked the state government to take steps to halt the test, saying it be ‘nipped in the bud.’

The resolution, referring to an announcement with respect to CUET to be held by the National Testing Agency, quoted it as saying that admissions to central varsities would be on the basis of national test score not taking into account the marks secured by students in the class 12 exams. The test score may also be ‘followed’ by state, private and deemed varsities if they opt so.

“The Assembly feels that any entrance examination that is based on National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) syllabus will not provide an equal opportunity to all students who have studied in varied state board syllabi across the country.”

In most states, state board syllabus constitutes more than 80% of the total student population and these students invariably hail from marginalised sections.

Hence, an NCERT syllabus-based entrance exam would place this deserving majority in a disadvantageous position in securing admission in central universities.

“The Assembly feels that in Tamil Nadu’s context, this is likely to drastically reduce the number of students from our state in various central universities and their affiliated colleges.”

Also read: Explainer: What We Know About UGC’s Common Entrance Test for Undergrad Admissions

There is no doubt that CUET, like NEET, would sideline the diverse school education systems across the country and grossly undermine the relevance of overall development oriented long-form learning in schools and make students rely on coaching centres for improving their entrance exam score.

“The people of Tamil Nadu feel that it will only favour further mushrooming of coaching centres. It is also felt that enforcing such an entrance examination along with regular schooling will lead to mental stress among student community. In order to exercise the rights of state governments, this assembly emphasises the Union Government to withdraw the proposal of conducting of Common University Entrance Test (CUET)”, it said.

Stalin, moving the resolution, said the Union government’s attack on the state’s right on education continued and an announcement in connection with the test said the CUET score could also be taken into account by state, private and deemed varsities. He sought unanimous adoption of the resolution. This is to see that the future of Tamil Nadu students was not affected.

After the chief minister moved the resolution, MLAs belonging to DMK’s alliance parties, the PMK and AIADMK’s K.P. Anbalagan, who is a former higher education minister spoke supporting the resolution. The BJP’s Nainar Nagendran opposed the resolution and sought its re-consideration and later led his party MLAs in staging a walkout.

Also read: India’s Hierarchical Education Sector Precludes the Creation of a ‘Meritocracy’

When Nagendran pointed out that using the CUET score was only optional for other varsities, minister for higher education K. Ponmudy intervened saying the NEET (National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test) too had a similar start. The BJP MLA also said there was no opposition in Kerala to the CUET which too has a Central varsity at Kasargode.

The chief minister said barring the BJP all the other parties have welcomed the government’s move, and it has given encouragement to the resolution.

Stalin said the resolution reflected the sentiments of the Tamil Nadu people. On behalf of the 8.5 crore Tamil Nadu people, Stalin said he urged the Centre to rescind the proposed exam.

Later, the resolution was adopted through a voice vote and speaker M. Appavu announced it was adopted unanimously.

(PTI)

‘What’s Wrong with Saffronisation of Education?’: Vice President Venkaiah Naidu

“We are accused of saffronising education. But then what is wrong with saffron?” he said, urging Indians to give up their “colonial mindset” and learn to take pride in their Indian identity.

New Delhi: Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu has called for the total rejection of Macaulay system of education while wondering why there is so much furore about “saffronisation of education”.

“We are accused of saffronising education. But then what is wrong with saffron?” he asked, after inaugurating the South Asian Institute of Peace and Reconciliation at the Dev Sanskriti Vishwa Vidyalaya in Haridwar on Saturday, March 19.

Naidu asked Indians at large to give up their “colonial mindset” and learn to take pride in their Indian identity. He added that the “Indianisation” of the education system was central to India’s new education policy, putting a lot of emphasis on the promotion of mother tongues.

“Centuries of colonial rule taught us to look upon ourselves as an inferior race. We were taught to despise our own culture, traditional wisdom. This slowed our growth as a nation. The imposition of a foreign language as our medium of education confined education to a small section of the society, depriving a vast population of the right to education,” he said, calling for the rejection of the Macaulay system of education in the 75th year of independence.

Thomas Babington Macaulay was a British historian who played a major role in the introduction of English as the medium of instruction for education in India.

“We should feel proud of our heritage, our culture, our forefathers. We must go back to our roots. We must give up our colonial mindset and teach our children to take pride in their Indian identity. We must learn as many Indian languages as possible. We must love our mother tongue. We must learn Sanskrit to know our scriptures, which are a treasure trove of knowledge,” the Vice President said.

Encouraging youngsters to propagate their mother tongue, he said, “I am looking forward to the day when all gadget notifications are issued in the mother tongue of a respective state. Your mother tongue is like your eyesight, whereas your knowledge of a foreign language is like your spectacles.”

“Foreign dignitaries coming to India speak in their mother tongue instead of English despite knowing it because they take pride in their own language,” he added.

“Sarve Bhawantu Sukhinah (all be happy) and Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam (the world is one family), which are philosophies contained in our ancient texts, are the guiding principles of India’s foreign policy even today,” Naidu said.

“India has had strong ties with almost all South Asian countries which have common roots. The Indus valley civilisation extended from Afghanistan to the Gangetic plains. Our policy of not attacking any country first is respected all over the world. It is the country of warrior king Ashoka the great, who chose non-violence and peace over violence.

“There was a time when people from all over the world came to study in the ancient Indian universities of Nalanda and Taxila, but even at the height of its prosperity, India never thought of attacking any country because we firmly believe that the world needs peace,” the Vice President said.

Apart from the pursuit of education, children should also be taught to stay in close contact with nature, he said. “Nature is a good teacher. You must have noticed that people living close to nature suffered less during the Covid crisis. The motto should be nature and culture together for a better future.”

(With PTI inputs)

Why ‘Free’ Is Not Good for Government Schools

Our poorest students are not guinea pigs for untested educational offerings, passionate but unskilled volunteers, or be at the mercy of corporations who want to imprint their brands on young minds.

Sunita, the principal, opened the door to her school’s library and said to me with unmistakable pride in her voice, “Everything is from XYZ, Ltd. (name changed), we did not spend a single rupee, all free.”

I was a visitor to the school. On the way back to her office, she introduced me to two volunteers teaching an ‘empowering girls’ curriculum to girl students from grade 5. When we returned to her office, two people from a technology company were waiting outside. They wanted to know when they could get feedback from teachers and students about the 50 phone tablets they had provided free under an institutional program.

This was the third ‘free’ offering for the government school. While there is one pandemic that everyone knows about and that has severely impacted our schools, I believe that there has been another, less visible one, silently eating at the roots of our government schooling system: the ‘free’ pandemic.

Most people would find nothing wrong with free services in public education and I used to be one of them. After all, what is wrong with a free collection of books, tablets or teaching that will empower the poor girls served by our government schools? Is it not better for the less privileged students who would otherwise not have access to such goods and services?

Over the years, my experience indicates that accepting free offerings may not be good for public education.

Also read: The Paper Horses That Our School Principals Have Become

First, nothing is really free. Think about it. When you see an offer to get a free coffee filter with a bag of coffee, what the offer does is manipulate your desires so that you buy more of their coffee over time. Almost every free thing offered has an official and a hidden agenda.

I am not saying that the hidden agenda is evil, but that it is usually invisible and not open to discussion. Scholars argue that programmes under corporate social responsibility (CSR) may create social harm with their agenda.

Apart from the intent to improve public schooling, CSR could also be a way to improve the corporate entity’s public image, to use the government schools as a testing ground to fine-tune their product offering (e.g. a tablet) or to leverage the free offering as a showcase for commercial contracts (e.g., to say “our curriculum is used in over 500 schools!”). Even NGOs face political pressures from activists within and without.

Nothing is really free also because a free offering still costs precious time and attention. Even if a library or a program is offered free to the schools, principals, teachers, and students must think how to integrate it within their daily schooling. A few government schools I visited in Mumbai had between 15 and 20 free programmes in operation – an academic and administrative nightmare for crafting coherence! A free curriculum or training will leave less time for lesson planning and instruction and an after-school program might take away precious play time.

Second, a free offering tempts us to let go of quality standards in education. Consider an example from Dan Ariely’s 2008 book Predictably Irrational. In an experiment about spending 26 cents on a luxury Lindt chocolate truffle or spending 1 cent on a lower-quality Hershey’s chocolate kiss, an equal number of people chose each option. But when the prices of both the items were lowered by 1 cent, making the chocolate kisses free, 90% of participants chose not to buy the truffle. Zero cost made the lower-quality chocolate kisses far more preferable.

In education, too, a free training workshop offered by an average-skill trainer will be overwhelmingly chosen over one offered by an accomplished expert, even if the latter is inexpensive. During the pandemic, teachers and principals rushed to free YouTube videos offered by well-meaning technology experts, whereas a wiser option would have been to pay an educational technology expert help them build a deeper understanding of teaching through technology.

Free videos suggested converting classroom lectures to online presentations, reinforcing a one-way talk-based instruction. An educational technology expert would have offered transformative ways to teach – but such knowledge was not explored because the other option was free.

In my experience, a free training session, just like a poor-quality chocolate, almost always leads to a bad taste. Free can be very expensive if it reinforces flawed misconceptions about teaching-learning.

Also read: Educational Administration Is a Worthy Endeavour

Third, I have heard two kinds of instrumental reasoning that encourage free in public education: access and service.

First, a school where students and teachers have access to tablets is better at digital capacity or a free school library means that students will read more. Second, free programmes fill the gap that the government is unable to service. Unfortunately, simply more access can be harmful because education is equally about values and context.

Books and software programs are written within a cultural context and can inculcate values such as violence, fixed gender roles, hero worship and pseudo-spirituality. Take Amar Chitra Katha for example – a popular comic series that seems like a safe choice for a free school library. But the series is unhealthy for young minds because it inculcates stereotypes about the right body and reinforces biases against minority groups.

Also, free interventions, which attempt to fulfil gaps may substitute the government’s responsibility to provide good education. In a way, a well-intentioned program may let the government off the hook for doing what it must do well.

So, should we demolish all free programmes? Not really. Instead, I want government schools to be extra careful when programs with a zero-price label offer to enter their classrooms. I offer three strategies to challenge the free mindset.

First, use educational values such as critical thinking, compassion and inclusion to judge the quality of any free offering. When offered tablets, ask providers to show how the software program supports inclusion or critical thinking. Check if the programs are backed by university partnerships. Importantly, when an NGO offers volunteers to teach the students or teachers, screen them for their values and competence. Gauge their subject and pedagogy mastery, ask what kind of books have informed their practice, and hold them accountable to the values they espouse.

Involve teachers and principals to evaluate any free offering. Yes, this means a school must work hard in clarifying and enforcing its values. What else would one expect from a public organisation with the crucial responsibility of serving the most vulnerable communities?

Second, use the psychological bias about money to your advantage. Enforce a minimum payment for any offering. Just by making the school pay even a nominal amount, say Rs 200 per person for a full-day training session, tricks the mind into evaluation mode. The shift to the paying mindset improves engagement for the attendees too: they will ask more questions and participate in the discussions because now that they are paying for it.

Finally, probe for other agendas. Ask what the NGOs and CSRs are getting as part of this offering. Develop a contract which enforces not collecting students’ data or not advertising their presence in your school to sell products. NGOs and CSRs with genuinely good intentions would welcome such transparency because they are always looking for schools as partners and not as organisations that must feel indebted.

The opportunity to volunteer in a public school must be seen as a hard-earned privilege instead of letting anyone passionate to roam the school corridors.

We need to spend more on public education – but poor quality in teaching and infrastructure is also rooted in corruption and red-tape. And the ‘free’ bandwagon, although well-intended, does not address these real issues. Let us inculcate and develop the self-respect that our government schools sorely need.

Our poorest students are not guinea pigs for untested educational offerings, passionate but unskilled volunteers, or be at the mercy of corporations who want to imprint their brands on young minds. Let us not sell our students’ future for ‘free’. It is our moral responsibility. It is what we signed up for.

Gopal Midha holds a PhD in educational leadership from the University of Virginia. He is currently setting up a Center for Research on School Leadership in Goa.

More Boys Dropped Out of School Than Girls at Secondary Level in India in 2019-20: Report

Overall dropout rate at the secondary level in the country is over 17%, while in the upper primary classes (6 to 8) and the primary level it is 1.8% and 1.5% respectively.

New Delhi: More boys dropped out of school at the secondary level as well as in primary classes (1 to 5), while the number of girls dropping out of school in the upper primary classes (6-8) was higher than that of the boys in 2019-20, according to a Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) report.

The report noted that the overall dropout rate at the secondary level in the country is over 17%, while in the upper primary classes (6 to 8) and the primary level it is 1.8% and 1.5% respectively.

The dropout rate for boys in primary classes was 1.7% as against the girls’ 1.2%. Similarly, the dropout rate for boys was higher in secondary classes (18.3%) than girls (16.3%).

In upper primary classes, the dropout rate for boys (1.4%) was less than that for girls (2.2%).

According to the report, nearly 30% students in the country do not transition from the secondary to the senior secondary level.

“With more than 15 lakh schools, nearly 97 lakh teachers and over 26.5 crore students from the pre-primary to the higher secondary level, the Indian school education system is one of the largest in the world. There are over 3.8 crore students enrolled at the secondary level, of whom 44.3% are in government schools, a little over 20% are with government-aided schools and nearly 35% are with private-unaided schools,” the report said.

Also read: Poor State of Digital Education Revealed as Only 22% Indian Schools Had Internet in 2019-20

The Unified District Information on School Education (UDISE), initiated in 2012-13 by the Ministry of Education by integrating the DISE for elementary education and the SEMIS for secondary education, is one of the largest management information systems on school education, covering more than 15 lakh schools, 85 lakh teachers and 25 crore children.

The UDISE+ is an updated and improved version of the UDISE.

The report revealed that there are 19 states and Union territories where the dropout rate at the secondary level (classes 9 and 10) is higher than the all-India rate (17.3%), with states like Tripura, Sikkim, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh having a dropout rate of over 25%. There are four states that recorded a dropout rate of over 30%.

While a majority of the states from the northeastern and eastern regions have a high dropout rate, Delhi too has a dropout rate of over 20%.

Along with Punjab (which has the lowest dropout rate of 1.5%), the states and Union territories with a less than 10% dropout rate are Chandigarh (9.5%), Kerala (8%), Manipur (9.6%), Tamil Nadu (9.6 %) and Uttarakhand (9.8%).

Comparatively, these are also the states and Union territories with the highest promotion rate at the secondary level, with Punjab, Manipur and Kerala having a promotion rate of over 90%.

According to the report, the overall dropout rate of girls is 2% less than that of the boys.

Punjab registered a zero dropout rate for girls, while Assam recorded the highest dropout rate (35.2%) at the secondary level. There are six states and Union territories where the dropout rate for boys is over 30%. For states like Goa, the boys’ (21.2%) dropout rate is nearly 10% higher than that of the girls (11.8%).

On the other hand, the report revealed that only 22% of schools in India had internet facilities in the academic year 2019-20, indicating the vast majority of schools for which imparting digital education, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has proved an uphill task.

For the academic 2019-20, the survey has revealed that less than 12% of government schools had internet facilities and less than 30% had functional computers.

( With PTI Inputs)