Public policy is littered with bad ideas informed by good purpose. We might get another one of these if the Cabinet-approved Bill on universal education is not properly debated. The Bill operationalises the 86th Constitutional Amendment, passed in December 2002, making education for children between the ages of 6 and 14 free and compulsory. This is good. This was overdue. But look at some of the Bill in detail. It proposes 25% reservation in private schools for disadvantaged neighbourhood children. It bans donations. It frowns upon interviews, of children or their parents, as a screening procedure. These are all aimed at making private education institutes more ?egalitarian?. Applied en masse, it will reduce the effectiveness of private institutions and there are also questions of institutional autonomy. The private sector needs to be encouraged, not made an unwilling actor in a populist drama. Poor Indians have tremendous demand for good education for their children and there?s evidence that the poor?s spending on private education, as indeed on private health, is increasing. The trick is to encourage new supply. Announcing that all poor children?s education will be paid for by the government in private schools?the voucher idea?but that parents are free to pick schools will surely increase the supply of private school education. A small experiment in Delhi has already shown good results. Corporate involvement in primary education in states like Rajasthan has produced encouraging results as well. The government must not rely on tired old social engineering. It won?t work.
There?s also a need to recognise the problem. Enrolment per se is not the biggest problem. Official data shows the number of out-of-school children has steadily declined from 32 million in 2001-02 to 7 million in early 2006-07. Seven million out-of-schoolers in total enrolment of 182 million (2005 figures) is a statistic that indicates the problem is somewhere else: drop out rates, which exceed 50% for both boys and girls. This is the real problem and to contend that one has to factor in the information that 90% of primary education is publicly provided. Obviously, bad infrastructure and bad teaching in most government primary schools influence dropout rates. This reinforces the case for private supply of primary education. Primary education can be a big business with a hugely positive social effect. The right incentives need to be created. The education bureaucracy, most importantly at the local level, has failed. Private educators who take government money to teach the children of the poor can be made more easily accountable. The right to education Bill must be debated.
