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Inequality in Education
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Why parents
prefer private schools
Surveys in several countries have shown that private schools are
roughly twice
as cost-effective as government schools, with similar categories of
students.
That’s probably true in
- Not by government, T N Ninan, Business Standard,
15/12/2001, [C.ELDOC.N20.not_government.html]
Even in vil-lages, the private sector is giving the government a run for its money— and its students. It was unheard of even a few years back: private schools in vil-lages and small towns. But they are fast becoming the norm rather than the exception, and parents are not complaining. Even if it means having to fork out any-thing between Rs 20 and Rs 100 as monthly tuition fees, they feel it provides their children a better al-ternative to government schools.
No one minds paying th-at amount, but the problem lies in the school
environment, say the researchers. A majority of the sch-ools do not
have any
playground. The classrooms are small, often partitioned into smaller
compa-rtments to cram in more students. "Our education system was
al-ready
stratified and the new priv-ate schools for children from low-income
rural
families have added one more layer. We can no more assume that private
schools
will have good infrastructure and qua-lity
teachers," says a researcher.
But parents are not complaini-ng. According to them, one major
advantage of
these schools is the access they get. In government sc-hools, they
hardly ever
get any inf-ormation about what their childr-en are doing, but in these
schools, they can meet the teachers and re-main updated on their wards.
The
study, conducted in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, found that one major
reason
for the pro-liferation of these schools is an in-crease in the number
of the
educated unemployed. For them, starting a school is a viable busi-ness
proposition because there is (now) a proven demand for them. But it is
very
likely that paren-ts are sending their children to th-ese ill-equipped
schools
for want of an alternative.
- Village schools minus govt aid, MONOBINA GUPTA,
Telegraph, 14/02/2001,
[C.ELDOC.N21.14feb01tel1.pdf]
The number of
private school going children is
significant given the poor economic condition of the area. The
inclination to
send children to private schools was found to be equally high among all
the
castes, and it was particularly evident among the relatively affluent
scheduled
tribe families. Of the 14 children enrolled in private schools, 12 were
from
scheduled tribe communities, obviously from the relatively better off
households. Although the quality of teaching in the private schools is
not
assured (and, in some cases, is worse than that imparted in government
schools), the illusory positive perception about these schools has
taken firm
root among the people.
All the parents
who send their
children to private schools expressed the belief that the learning
achievement
of children in private schools, especially in learning the English
language
(which is one of primary selling points of these schools, who advertise
themselves as ‘English medium’ schools, even if this is far from being
the
actual state of affairs), would help the children in building their
futures. In
addition, there is a belief among many respondents that since the
private
schools charge fees, they must be imparting quality education. Another
reason
for the growing inclination towards private schools is the relatively
better
management and apparently disciplined atmosphere of such schools. These
can
perhaps be seen as pointers to the expression and intensification of
class
divisions among tribal societies. Property and other economic relations
have
already brought about a change among them and phenomena such as private
schools
serve to intensify these divisions.
- Primary Education in Jharkhand, Kumar Rana,
Samantak Das, Economic and
Political Weekly, 13/03/04, [J.ELDOC.N21.130304EPW1171.html]
Why
cannot
excellence be for everyone?
It is not just
a question of throwing open your
doors. In this age of branded lifestyles, a child from the
underprivileged
sections will find herself lost and alienated in a public school”, this
is how
a private school principal reacted in one of the national dailies,
against the
Delhi high court and Delhi government orders on admitting children from
underprivileged sections. It is difficult to find fault with this
argument in
the background of the existing policy design and mindset on the
principle of
schooling.
The Ramamurti
committee while
reviewing the 1986 policy asked for implementing the neighbourhood
school
concept as the ‘‘first step in securing equity and social justice’’. The
CABE (central advisory board of education) committee on policy (1992)
while
examining the Ramamurti committee report asked the ‘‘privileged
schools’’ to
accept ‘‘social responsibility by sharing their facilities and
resources with
other institutions and facilitating access to children of the
disadvantaged
groups.’’ Some private schools in the metropolis are running
‘‘centres’’ for
the ‘‘underprivileged’’ in the afternoon or in their outhouses — thus
doing
‘‘excellence’’ in the forenoon and equity in the afternoon, devoid of
the
principle of addressing excellence and equity simultaneously.
- Too many nations in education, MADAN
M. JHA, Indian Express,
04/11/2004, [C.ELDOC.N00.04nov04ie1.html]
A Supreme Court
judgement will now regulate private
schools in Delhi in order to reduce the rich-poor divide. THIS is one
Supreme
Court judgement that is bound to change the face of private school
education in
Delhi and possibly the entire country. In a bid to check the
commercialisation
of education and ensure that private unaided schools do not renege on
their
social obligations, the apex court delivered a three-pronged verdict
earlier
this week. First, it stipulated that all recognised private unaided
schools in
the capital have to reserve 20-25 per cent of seats for children from
weaker
sections of society. Second, it has mandated that schools cannot
increase their
fees without the prior approval of the Directorate of Education (DoE)
of the
Delhi government. Many schools got land cheap on condition that 25%
seats will
be freeships.
Finally, schools are now bound to make their financial accounting
processes
more transparent and prove they are non-profit institutions.
"This was done
in order to promote integration
of rich and poor sections of society and to drive home the fact that an
educational institution has a social obligation to fulfil," says lawyer
Ashok Aggarwal, who was part of
the group that filed a pil on this
matter in the Delhi High Court in 2002.
- Lunch
Break's Up, ANUPREETA
DAS, Outlook, 10/05/2004, [C.ELDOC.N20.10may04out1.html]
The
benefits of the five-star school are available
only to those who can afford the whopping fees...
Looking at the statistics, it does-n't seem like much. Of the eight
lakh
schools in the country, only about six per cent are private. Yet, in
recent
years, every fresh academic session has brought with it new schools
that fill
up before you can say first term. The schools are com-plete,
ready-to-run
structures with full staff, facilities, sometimes-eclec-tic methods of
education and fees that run into thousands a month. In short, there's
'money' written
all over them. "Schools are being set up as busi-nesses," concedes
Sumer Singh, an ex-Doon School headmaster...
Shoumie Das, an education advisor who's helped set up schools like
Ahlcon
Inter-national School and Sanskriti in Delhi, counters this: "Why is
busi-ness such a dirty word in India? Why can't you run something like
a
business, provided you give quality? The question to ask is that if the
schools
are running as businesses, are they still giving quality?"
Schools like
ours are fulfilling a
crying need un-met by government-run or public schools." And, feels
Hardip
Sikund, principal at the Indian Public Sc-hool, Dehra Dun, while not
everyone
can afford it, "for those who can, it's a good alternative." However,
"those who can" are only a select few in the country. Also, some
schools do tend to take 'quali-ty' too far: agreed that as an adult you
work
and commute in air-condi-tioned comfort, but do you really want your
child to
grow up without seeing a rougher side to life? Fur-ther,
since only "those who can" can afford the school, do you want your
Private schools aim to tap the potential of the children child to be
insulated
from the other 95 per cent of the world? Das sees nothing wrong with
air-conditioned classrooms, but agrees that because of the fee, there
is a
certain polari-sation of society.
- The five-star SCHOOL BLOOM, Rashmi Vaish,
Telegraph, 21/07/2002, [C.ELDOC.N22.21jul02ht1.pdf]
On June 18, a Danish firm called Egmont International will open the first two in its chain of 'branded playschools-cum-nurs-eries' at Versova and Thane. And such is the demand for nurseries with names that both places have already been filled up. That branded playschools are in great demand is evident from the success of a chain like Kangaroo Kids. Set up by an Indian-born Australian national, Lina Ashar, in 1993, it now has eight centres in Mumbai and branches in six other cities including Kanpur, Jaipur and Indore.
What also
entered this brave new world of child's play was
the commercial aspect big bucks were to be made from pre-schools, a
fact amply
illustrated by the innumerable little nurseries that have sprouted in
the city.
While premier nurseries like Kan-garoo Kids charge upto Rs 1,800 per
month,
Egmont has started with Rs 750 at its Thane branch and Rs 1,200 at
Versova,
where the playschool is air-conditioned. Other fee rates range from Rs
15,000
per year at Sophia Nursery and Rs 1,800 at Children's Nook.
Egmont says that its trump card is that within its walls learning will
be fun,
helped on by a friendly mascot called Euro Bunny and various Funrooms.
- Branded playschools are the latest players on the play way
bandwagon, Nina
Martyris, Times of India, [C.ELDOC.N21.17jun01toi1.pdf]
Private schools
take thoughtless steps to improve results...
The Bombay HC on Wednesday issued notices to the education secretary
and three
city schools to respond to the issue of segregation of students on the
basis of
academic performance, converting a letter sent by psychiatrists and
parents suo
motu into a public interest petition.
In March this year, Dr Harish Shetty, president of the Counsellors
As-sociation
of India, Arun-dhati Chavan, president of the Parents and Teachers
Associated
United Forum, and Dr H L Kaila, reader of the department of psychology,
SNDT,
had sent a letter to the chief justice and the state human rights
commission,
draw-ing attention to the emerging practice of segregating students on
the
basis of their marks....
The letter condemned the practice of segregation as
detrimental to the
development of the child. The root of this trend lay in trying to get
as many
merit-holders as possible in the SSC, to "enhance the self-esteem of
the
school..at the cost of the self-esteem of the children", they said.
- HC notices to schools on student segregation, Times
of India,
30/09/2004, [C.ELDOC.N20.30sep04toi1.pdf]
The policy of
segre-gating students based on their academic
per-formance has been around in some schools for decades, and was
hitherto accepted
by parents, albeit reluc-tantly. No more, howev-er. Upset at the
discrimi-nation being meted out, the Counsellors Association of India
(CAI) and
the PTA United Forum on Wednesday approached the State Human Rights
Commission
(SHRC) to put a stop to the "harmful" practice. A written petition
will soon be submitted to SHRC. The PTA United Fo-rum has been
receiving
complaints from students of segregation-happy schools for years now
(some begin
segregating students as early as standard I) and has listed complaints
about 40
schools in Mumbai.
-
Pecking order in schools is 'mental torture', Roli
Srivastava, Times of India, 12/04/2005, [C.ELDOC.N20.12apr05toi1.pdf]
Despite the
whopping fees, in many instances the private
schools do not provide quality education...
This
is a story of high fees and falling ceiling fans.
While parents battle to get their children in schools, pay high fees
and suffer
ever increasing demands from school manage-ments, Mumbai schools follow
a
strange bottom line. You pay, we do not deliver. Every school: has a
little
story. Of how fees and other donations were extorted in the name of
building
funds, purchase of air-conditioners etc. Investigations by The Asian
Age also
show that there is a major slip between the income that schools
generate and
the amount they actually spend.
In
August, a fan snapped off
the ceiling in the standard VIII C classroom and came crashing down,
damaging
the tables and chairs. Fortunately, the fan fell a little before the
stu-dents
entered the class, it it would have landed right on them. "What does
the
school do with the Rs 200 it charges from stu-dents per month along
with fees
for building maintenance?" asks an infuriated parent, as he furnish-es
receipt from the school for March to May 1998-99. The receipt gives the
tuition
fee amount as Rs 780, maintenance charges as Rs 600, computer fees as
Rs 225
and bus fees as Rs 405, making the total fees Rs 2,010. Mr Bharat
Mehta, a member of the school's parent teacher association adds, "Even
the
window panes shake and rattle every time a train passes by. If they
shatter,
children are bound to get hurt. The school has done nothing to prevent
this
happening," points out another parent. According to him, it has been
more
than two years since the school collected fees for an airconditioner
and
nothing has been bought yet. Often, PTA members gather outside the
school to
seek a meeting with the management and return in vain.
- Schools motto: You give, we take, Harsha Khot,
Asian Age, 25/10/2000, [C.ELDOC.N21.25oct00aa1.pdf]
Why private intervention in education erodes the
welfare character of the
State...
Privatisation is often misinterpreted to mean complete withdrawal of the state from financing higher education. Such a wrong dichotomy, is fraught with serious implications...From an excessive degree of public subsidy one does not have to move towards the opposite extreme of zero subsidy in the name of privatisation. This is exactly what the so-called self-financing colleges purport to accomplish. Under this dispensation the entire costs are sought to be realised from the users namely the students/parents.
Such an approach conflicts with the welfare as well as the development
roles of
the state.
There are several reasons why state subsidisation of higher education
should
continue, albeit at a reduced level.
(1) Even where there is a strong case for reducing public subsidy to
higher
education, it is urged that the reduction should be carried out in a
phased
manner [Wolff 1984:30].
(2) Subsidy
is also favoured on
equity grounds as education is considered to be a major source of
inequality in
developing countries. It is argued that well-to-do parents are apt to
be better
educated and that they presumably face lower costs than poor parents
probably
in absolute terms and certainly in relation to their income [Fields
1980:269].
(3) It may also
be noted that in
many countries where the private sector has come to play a predominant
role in
higher education, government support is an important source of funding
even for
the private sector. For instance, in many prestigious universities in
the US
such as Harvard, Colombia and Yale, state scholarships are a major
source of
funding [cited in Tilak 1993:247].
(4) More importantly, it is also pointed out that the state
cannot simply
surrender its responsibility by leaving the domain of higher education
entirely
to the private sector whose motivation in establishing self-financing
colleges,
especially in the medical and engineering fields, seems mainly to
consist in
their profitability [Kothari 1986:593-96].
(5) Finally one often comes across the criticism that by
concentrating on
profit-yielding, cheap career-oriented courses, the self-financing
institutions
provide vocational training under the name of higher education [Tilak
1993:252].
- Financial Aspects of Privatisation of Higher Education, E
T Mathew,
Economic & Political Weekly, 06/04/1996, [J.ELDOC.N00.06apr99EPW.pdf]
THERE seems to
be a widespread
notion that education is also to be left to market forces when the
structural
reforms become fully opera-tional. The rationale behind the now oft
repeated
demand for privatisation of education, particular-ly at the higher
level, is
this idea of marketisation. The issue had figured in the annual session
of the
Association of Indian Universities (AIU) held at Pondicherry in
February last.
As many as 130 Vice-Chancellors and senior educationists had attended
the meet
and a considerable number is reported to have favoured progressive
privatisa-tion
of higher education. Private agencies have been operating in
the field of
education for more than 150 years. Their role has changed considerably
over the
years from the early missionary zeal to the present profit-oriented
approach.
This has resulted in an increase in the number of private educational
in-stitutions, but also a steep reduction of the finan-cial
contribution of
these agencies towards coun-try's educational expenditure.
The NPE document
adopted by the Parliament in
1986 or the Programe of Action (PoA) publish-ed later as a sequel, does
not
envisage marketi-sation as also the total nationalisation of education.
Nor
does the Ramamurti Review Committee appointed by the Janata Dal
Government or the
Janardhana Reddy Committee appointed by the Congress Government, which
was in
the saddle soon after, speak of marketisation of education. While all
the
education reports have acknowledged with a deep sense of gratitude the
pion-eering efforts of private agencies in the field, there is, of
late, a
tendency to look upon them with a little suspicion if not downright
disap-proval.
In the post
Independence period to
meet the increased demand for educational avenues a new class of
educational
entrepreneurs with ill concealed political backing and patronage
emerged. Their
presence was conspicuous in the field of professional education like
medicine,
engineering, dentistry, teacher education, etc.
The standard of
many such
institutions was extremely poor. Regulations regarding buildings
equipment,
library, laboratory, playgrounds, etc. were relaxed for such
institutions under
pressure from powerful political groups. Naturally the academic
attainments of
students who passed out of these institutions were also substandard.
This has
given rise to the universal criticism that standard of higher education
is
going down.
This dangerous,
rapid trend of privatisation of at least
professional colleges has been checked by the landmark judgment of the
Supreme
Court on February 4, 1993. Landmark judgments The earlier judgment of
Mr.
Justice Kuldip Singh in the Mohini Jain case had ruled that edu-cation
was a fundamental
right guaranteed by
Article 21 in Part III of the Constitution. It seemed that the
appellate
judiciary was trying to uphold the egalitarian ideals which the
executive was
jettisoning one by one due to exigencies of pol-itical situation.
The structural
changes we have
been introducing since mid-1991 necessitate a fresh look at the NPE and
radical
modifications. The view that like industry and commerce, education also
should
be privatised has received a severe jolt from our recent experience and
apex
court judgment. Market has failed in the matter of education
as against the
common belief of the exponents of free enterprise. For one thing,
market is
short-sighted and profit motivated. Education is a matter in which we
require
longterm perspective. Therefore, it is time for us to remove
the present
confusion re-garding the development of education and the role of
private
agencies vis-a-vis the State. The Supreme Court judgment has totally
barred the
entry of individuals, company or firm in the area of professional
education.
Only registered trusts can. establish and run such colleges subject tor
clear
stipulations regarding the admission of students and the rates of fees
collected from them!
The egalitarian ideals of the Constitution, the elitist perceptions of
the
National Policy on Edu-cation, the judgment of the Supreme Court and a
lack of
clear sense of direction on the part of Central and State governments
together
have created a sense of confusion in the minds of the people regarding
educational future of this country
- Privatisation:boon or bane?, N A Karim, Hindu,
13/07/1993, [C.ELDOC.N00.13jul93h1.pdf]
But a
completely free reign to the State is not the solution
either...
In this phase, the argument that private interests present the greater danger to higher education sounds like an old romantic song. Those fond of singing it translate private interests as a synonym for commer-cialisation. They refuse to see any point in the plea that state and private capital can both present an equal threat to academic freedom if either is allowed to play a monopoly role. It is true that in the United States corporate forces perceive the campus as a business park. The vast infrastructure created with public funds is now coming under the control of dubious commercial interests. Several leading areas of scientific research have become victims of this process. But, such developments have hardly any relevance for us at least for now.
In our case,
the state seems determined to use education for
ideological
propaganda. Private capital cannot redress this situation,
but it does
present the potential of giving higher education some protection from
financial
and political control by the state.
...The expansion of an exclusive private sector in education is a
socially
divisive process. But we can investi-gate that to a certain extent by
promoting
a collaborative model. Examples of collabora-tion between state and
business do
exist, though they are rather few.
-
Aiming Higher, Krishna Kumar, Times of India,
12/03/2005, [C.ELDOC.N20.12mar04toi1.pdf]
The World Bank
despite being aware of the negative
consequences , continues to promote Private Schools...
On the role of
the private sector
in education, the research question regarding the relative advantages
and
disadvantages of private versus public schooling was often framed in
terms of:
do children in private schools have a current learning or future wage
advantage
than those in public schools? However, the overwhelming
historical evidence
is that neither in industrialised countries nor in contemporary
high-achieving
developing ones did the private sector play a predominant role in
universalising schooling. (But) World Bank (1986) had argued
strongly for
encouraging the expansion of non-government schools, suggesting, "in
(government) schools resources are not being used as efficiently as
they might
be, (a) problem reinforced by the lack of competition between schools"
[cited in Jones
1992].
…In fact, in
- Human Capital or Human Development? Search for a Knowledge
Paradigm for
Education and Development, Santosh Mehrotra, Economic
& Political
Weekly, 22/01/2005, [J.ELDOC.N00.22jan05EPW300.html]
************************************************************************************************
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Schools and UEE by
Anuradha De, Manabi Majumdar Meera Samson Claire Noronha Ch11- pg 131-
150,
Oxford University Press, 01/01/2002, [N21.G.1]
2.
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95-113, Oxford
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[R.N10.8]
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R.N10.6]
11. Private
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Court judgement, Education Dialogue, [B.N00.C7]
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1.
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of the Old School
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