Look at a smart affluent metro kid, confidently questioning and answering back. Who gave her this confidence? Undoubtedly it is an education system which was made available to her. It is a system, which is confident of its supreme knowledge and provides her with all the right tips at the right moment and makes excellence a routine. This creates the foundation, on which these ?wonder kids? build themselves and later move on to be a part of the premier institutes of IITs, IIMs and the likes. Though not everybody makes it to these premier institutes; yet, most of these have been endowed by the available information network and private education infrastructure, which these students can afford, they get an entry to the next best institutions. This gives all of them the license to be a part of a high return system and give their next generation the highest chance of continuing in this elite bracket. Hence, the education standard that a child is exposed to is of critical importance in shaping her life.
Typically there is both software and hardware component that goes to create these brands of ?wonder kids?. However, given a critical minimum infrastructure, it is the software, i.e. a brand of well educated teachers and teaching standards that makes the difference. A closer look at the national statistics, suggests that the software is really weak when looked at from an all India level and as usual, more so in rural as compared to urban as compared to elite urban class, as represented here by a sample of schools registered with the CBSE in Delhi.
While 65% of the teachers in rural India, working in the primary section, are non-graduates, 50% are non-graduates in urban India. Non-graduates in the premier schools of Delhi are almost non-existent. 80% of the teachers in rural and urban India are trained, whereas 100% of the teachers are trained in the Delhi sample schools. The situation improves with transition from primary to upper primary and secondary, but there is always a backlog. One needs to look into the quality of educational background and exposure of the teachers too, which is not at par within teachers in rural and urban India as compared to those of schools per excellence.
Thus the system functions, with the disadvantaged well entrenched in a low level equilibrium, with occasional exception. Can education cess or subsidy or reservation solve this problem? Well the answer is both yes and no. While cess and subsidy can create resources, but it will not be able to ensure availability of the more endowed teaching talent to reach the rural and less privileged kids and students up to the secondary level. The real difference happens at this beginners? level, wherein the disadvantaged kids lose the confidence and the rest of the journey is one of looking forward to subsidy and reservation, which only can create a marginal difference in the fortunes of these huge amount of less privileged, especially given the increasing privatisation in the job market.
The proportion of this problem is gigantic to be modest. In this war against illiteracy, the nation needs to cash in on its largest talent of human resources. Interestingly, there is also a significant element of government subsidy that goes in creating this talent which is now available to be picked up at market rates. One is not against government subsidy, but then this is a dichotomy?on one side there is lack of appropriate talent to promote education in general, on the other the government creates such potential talent but they are picked up by the market in a natural process. We need to bridge this gap, not by complete market mechanism, which will be costly, but by dedicating some service in the making of the nation. The state can support the basic cost, but there has to be voluntary service by the educated class. This service can come from the higher secondary, college and university students and medium to long term teacher exchange programme at appropriate levels.
However, given the high level of marketisation, one does not see this coming voluntarily, until it becomes an acceptable norm. But then if illiteracy is a menace and the nation is on a war footing, why can?t we think in terms of one-time compulsory education services by the educated privileged? This will also bridge the knowledge gap between the rich and the poor India, at a very early stage and promote inclusive thought process.
?The author is a project director at Foundation for MSME Clusters. He can be reached at tamalsarkar3@gmail.com These are his personal views