Apart from the fact that this is the first time since independence that a new fundamental right — Right to Education (RTE) — has been added to the Constitution, it is also true that the educational empowerment has been a cause close to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s heart. A beneficiary of scholarships and good education, the PM began his professional life as a teacher and his last non-political job was that of chairman, University Grants Commission. So, it is not surprising that he has chosen to address the nation on the day the RTE comes into effect. The move, along with other programmes such as the Right to Information, the Women’s Reservation Bill and the MNREGA are all part of the UPA’s ambitious social sector agenda, but more than any other programme, the RTE has the biggest potential to be a game-changer. There are enough data that show wage levels rise with education levels, so apart from how the industrial and service sector will benefit from a better-educated work force, there are huge anti-poverty aspects to the RTE.
That said, there are important lessons the UPA must learn while implementing the RTE. The part of the RTE that says private schools have to reserve a fourth of their seats for the poor and other categories of children has got disparate responses — while the better-recognised private schools are terrified of what this will do to their ability to function freely as well as to their bottom lines, several others are licking their chops at the thought of another government-sponsored expenditure programme since government-payments for these 25 per cent students opens up an entirely new avenue of corruption and palm-greasing. The other provision of the RTE that has wider ramifications is the one which says all schools will now have to be “recognised” — the “unrecognised” schools have three to five years to comply. To be “recognised”, schools will have to meet certain infrastructure needs and their teachers will also need to have specified educational qualifications and must get paid a salary to be stipulated by the government. Whatever the merits or demerits of this proposal, the UPA would do well to look at various studies on “para-teachers” — teachers generally hired on contracts, usually answerable to the local panchayat/administration and at salaries around a fourth those of regular government teachers. Data from the District Information System on Education which is collected from the million-plus elementary schools in the country shows that para-teachers tend to have higher educational qualifications than regular teachers. Studies in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar by Kingdon and Banerji, as well as others, show that the absenteeism by para-teachers is much less. It is around half that of regular teachers in UP— there is little difference in Bihar though, possibly since para-teachers there are appointed for life and are not necessarily local to the panchayat. These studies also show that children taught by para-teachers are as good if not better than those taught by regular teachers — once again, the difference is high in UP, but isn’t in Bihar since para-teacher absenteeism in the state is quite high. Since the Right to Education is irrelevant if the government chooses not to deliver it, anything which lowers the cost of delivery without compromising on the quality of education (and may even improve it) is important.
