Subir Gokarn: Inclusi-vizing education

One who doesn't want to face the pressures and requirements of the board exams should not be forced to do so.

The Draft Approach Paper to the 11th Five-Year Plan, released by the Planning Commission last month (though with the caveat that it is yet to be approved by the Commission), sets "faster and more inclusive growth" as the basic objective of the plan. A critical component of the strategy for inclusiveness is widening access to and the effectiveness of the education system at all levels.

I believe that this objective is feasible, but requires a fundamentally different approach to, particularly, primary and secondary education. A couple of months ago, I was invited to contribute a piece to a souvenir brought out by a Mumbai-based organisation, Yuva Parivartan, which imparts marketable skills to young people who have been unable to complete formal schooling. The souvenir was put together on the occasion of Yuva Parivartan's annual career fair, "Second Chance". The organisation's approach is consistent with my own views on education, and, to my mind, particularly relevant to the issue of inclusiveness. I reproduce below the text of my contribution to the souvenir; it was entitled "A democracy of opportunity".

How does a society decide on the amount of time a young person has to spend being educated? Obviously, there are no hard and fast rules or formulae that can be applied. Some experimentation, some trial and error are necessary, along with recognition of the person's learning capacity and his/her ability to apply that learning in practical situations. The fact that most societies have converged to a 10-12 year schedule for schooling points more to their emphasis on people entering the workforce as adults rather than as children, rather than to any firm evidence on the desirability of this length of time.

For the moment, though, let's accept the premise that the desirable length of schooling is defined by entry into adulthood. This does not tell us anything about what the child is supposed to learn during that time. Anybody looking at the course content for schools in India could reasonably conclude that it is more a result of cutting the syllabus to fit the time rather than the outcome of a rigorous thought process that takes into consideration the needs of society, the capabilities and inclinations of the child, and how best to align the two. From this perspective, there is both enormous repetition and enormous redundancy in the 12-year syllabus.

If we agree with this proposition, then we have to accept the fact that there is a huge social cost to insisting on completing 10 or 12 years of formal education to acquire the momentous "school-leaving certificate". If the three conditions referred to above""needs, capabilities and alignment""can be satisfied as far as the average individual is concerned, by say, 5 or 6 years of formal education, why can't we recognise this and spare children who have achieved this landmark but not the formal requirement of 10-12 years the stigma of being "drop-outs"?

Given the nature of our economic development, there are several marketable skills that the school system simply cannot impart to students, for both bad and good reasons. There is no point saying that this is the responsibility of the higher education system; many people who can easily acquire these skills and thrive professionally will not have access to the higher education system, not only because they do not acquire a school-leaving certificate; even if they achieve this milestone, they do not score enough or have the resources necessary to enter professional programmes. The solution lies in recognising that there are many skills of significant economic value which can be acquired by people with very basic literacy and numeracy skills, which a reasonably efficient primary education system should be able to impart in 5-6 years.

At the heart of democracy is equal access to opportunity. This does not mean equality in outcomes; more capable and hard-working people will inevitably do better. It does, however, mean that society should not impose an arbitrary and dysfunctional distinction between school leavers and school drop-outs, which ensures access to both employment and further education to the former while denying it to the latter. True democracy of opportunity will allow every individual to realise his or her full potential, with the legitimate expectation that this individual reciprocates by finding a balance between individual goals and social interests and concerns.

This places two requirements on the primary education system, which, as was indicated above, should take about 5-6 years. One addresses the practical skills needed to survive in the real world""literacy, numeracy, use of computers and perhaps a few others, like basic accounting and finance. The other deals with the issues of social alignment, including basic values and norms, which allow people to productively co-exist, a sense of history and social roots, environmental concerns, and so on. All children should be exposed in letter and spirit to these two parallel streams over the first 5 or 6 years, at the end of which each one receives due recognition. At the age of 11 or 12, he or she is now deemed to have completed the basic requirements and cannot be stigmatised as a "drop-out" or worse.

Beyond this lies a legitimate set of options, based on the child's inclinations, skills and resources. Some may want to continue with conventional secondary schooling, preparing themselves for a university or comparable pathway. Others may want to pick up practical skills, combining classroom and on-the-job training for the requisite number of years, during which they would have some capacity to earn their keep, thus easing parental resource constraints. One who doesn't want to face the pressures and requirements of the board exams should not be forced to do so. Certification norms and practices that indicate skill levels can easily evolve in ways appropriate to each channel.

Of course, this requires significant policy and regulatory changes on the part of the central and state governments as also the effective participation of the business world and civil society. But, first there the problem must be recognised and the solution proposed seen as appropriate.

Even as we pride ourselves on being the world's largest democracy, we have to accept the fact that our educational system is elitist to an embarrassing degree. The two tendencies are contradictory and cannot co-exist forever. Broad-based development will require an inclusive educational system that accommodates the diversity of the children using it, while laying down some common foundations in terms of practical skills and social values. It is high time we re-oriented our system towards that objective.

The author is Chief Economist, CRISIL. The views are personal. Yuva Parivartan can be accessed at www.yuvaparivartan.org.