The Rajasthan government has come under attack for opening up the health and education sectors to private managers. The draft public-private partnership (PPP) policy lacks clarity. Activists allege the state has abdicated its responsibility of providing primary services to benefit a select few. Rajasthan is among those states with a low literacy rate. State Education Minister Vasudev Devnani defends his government's move in this interview with Sahil Makkar. Edited excerpts:
What is the rationale behind the PPP policy in education?
Our government is working towards improving the quality of education in Rajasthan. In the past few years the prestige and credibility of government schools have suffered. Parents, too, have grown fonder of private schools. To improve education standards, we decided to run some schools on a PPP basis. This is a limited experiment with the aim of providing quality education to children at costs matching those of government schools. We want to have schools that will become role models for others in the state.
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We have just prepared the policy; we are awaiting proposals now. As a token we have decided to start with five schools. We have not finalised the schools and are yet to sign a memorandum of understanding.
Are you planning to bring private players into all three categories of schools: primary, secondary and senior secondary?
We are looking at senior secondary schools. We want to have 10,000 such Adarsh schools, where classes 1 to 12 will be under one roof. Earlier we used to have separate primary, secondary and senior secondary schools. Students had to take a certificate to migrate to another level of education or school. This was causing difficulties for teachers, students and parents. The dropout rate was also high. So we have decided to set up one Adarsh school in each gram panchayat on the pattern of private schools.
Are these the same schools that were formed by merging existing schools in gram panchayats? The move has not gone down well with all the stakeholders.
We have merged more than 13,000 schools. The idea behind merging the schools was to pool in resources at one place to ensure availability of teachers and bring education to the same level. The criticism against these schools is unjustified because we have followed all the norms under the Right to Education (RTE) Act: providing elementary education within 1 km, middle schools within 2 km and high schools within 5 km of the homes of students. Previous governments and ours too, were busy opening schools for political reasons, but this is the first time that a chief minister (Vasundhara Raje) thought of bringing quality into the system. We thought the schools could be few in number, but they should have teachers.
Hasn't it led to more dropouts?
On the contrary, enrolment has increased by more than five lakh in the current session. In the last three years, the number of dropouts was more than 12 lakh. Parents not only take into consideration how far a school is located from their homes, but also the quality of education it imparts. We have implemented a new staff pattern policy, which ensures at least 14 teachers in a government school.
But this has increased the distance to schools.
What matters to people is quality. Students travel by buses to go to private schools.
Everyone cannot afford private schools. What about the poor?
We are giving bicycles to girls studying in class 9 and above. Students who have to travel more than 5 km to reach their schools are being given a daily transport voucher of Rs 20 this current session onwards.
How much does the state government spend on one student annually?
On an average, the per student cost from class 1 to class 12 is Rs 16,900. This cost has been increasing. Five years ago it was around Rs 9,000, then it rose to Rs 11,000 and Rs 14,000 subsequently. Rajasthan is the only state that, under the RTE Act, got more than four lakh students admitted to private schools.
There is no study or empirical data to suggest that private institutions are better than government-run ones.
Private institutions manage one or two schools, whereas we (the government) have to handle more than 70,000 schools. Also, private schools largely admit students who score more than 60 per cent marks, whereas we admit those who get even 33 per cent. The comparison is unjustified.
Isn't the state abdicating its primary responsibility of providing basic services to its citizens?
Private schools have an important role to play. We are providing more options to students. It is up to students whether they want to study in a private school, a government school or a privately-managed government school. This will create a healthy environment where we will see competition among the schools.
What is the guarantee that privately-managed government schools will perform better?
This is an experiment with five to 10 schools. If it doesn't work we will cancel the contract, which is for 10 years. The results will start showing in a year.
The biggest criticism of the PPP policy is that you will be handing out schools on a first-come-first-served basis. This kind of arbitrage may lead to corruption.
Our policy should not be compared with former telecom minister A Raja's first-come-first-served policy. There is no scope of making money in education. The PPP model is an experiment to hand over schools to those private institutions that have been managing their own schools well. Education and health should not be seen as a business; it's a service. But if there is any case of wrongdoing, the government can always modify its policy.
The policy is silent on funding for new schools to be set up under the PPP policy.
We will neither give funds or land to establish new schools.
Teachers allege that commercialisation of education will cut down new recruitment of teachers and the government will get an excuse to not fill existing vacancies.
We have recently filled 15,000 posts in the third grade. We will soon be conducting a competitive exam to fill more vacancies. There is no need for worry. Now the government teachers have to perform.
