Private unaided schools are smarting under a clause of the Right to Education (RTE) Act which mandates that even private educational institutions have to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for children from poor families. They believe the Act, which came into force last week, will do more harm than good by enforcing quotas.
“The idea of 25 per cent reservations is misdirected. Reservation is not going to solve the problem. What right does the government have to mandate 25 per cent reservation in schools which are private and unaided? This is akin to forcing reservation in the private sector. The government can drive reservation in government and private-aided schools but the risk is that it will tamper with the only part of schooling in this country where there is some quality existing – the private unaided schools,” asserts Sumeet Mehta, CEO of Zee Learn.
Lina Ashar, Chariperson of Kangaroo Kids Education limited (KKEL), too, believes “there's not much clarity yet on what the Bill means for players like us”. “Implementation is a question mark. We are still grappling with the 25 per cent reservation. They are now talking about children in the age group of 6-14. But what happens to the academic progress of the child between the age of 3-6?” asks Ashar of KKEL which is an entity in pre-schools and K-12 segment (kindergarten-12).
“Besides, we have a student teacher ratio of 24:2 whereas government schools have a student teacher ratio of 40:1. It’s a nightmare for a child who comes in at 6 and one child who has been in school from age 3,” she notes.
Teacher salaries, according to government data, average around Rs 20,000 per month. “These wages are not in line with reality when compared with the market wage of teachers. States can explore the idea of allowing the schools to design their own ways and means to manage teachers and structure their own salary packages,” reasons a Mumbai-based primary school teacher.
Industry observers also believe private schools might end-up charging more to the 75 per cent of students - who are paying tuitions - to make space for the 25 per cent of students they would be forced to accommodate. This will drive up tuition fees for private schools while government schools continue to be taxpayer-funded and essentially free.
Education activists have a different take on the subject. The believe the Act is majorly input-focused rather than outcome-oriented, and would penalise private unrecognised schools for their practise of not paying market salaries for teachers and lacking the infrastructure facilities defined under the Act.
“There are many players who have spread their schools to various locations in Mumbai. These players fund the local bodies to get the land and take grant and aid from the government to run the schools. They keep the cost low by paying low salaries to teachers and thus make money,” says a Mumbai-based observer of the education sector.
Experts also caution that with the Maharashtra government making it compulsory not to fail students till the eighth grade, their schools will be full, at least on paper. “This is a perfect recipe to keep ghost students and get money for students and teachers more so, as education falls under the concurrent list of the constitution and the central and state authorities have agreed on sharing of expenses (35:65 ratio). There has to be a mechanism to measure the output,” he adds.
Incidentally, industry body Assocham analysis reveals that primary education in India is highly under-developed as compared to the other emerging nations. Although primary education is compulsory and there is legal guarantee of free education, the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in primary education is the least in India at 98.1. The highest gross enrolment ratio is in Brazil (148.5), followed by China (116.2) and Russia (113.8) Even Indonesia (110.9) and South Africa (105.1) enjoy better enrolment ratio than India.
