The Claim of AAP Govt on Education Reforms: A Brief Analysis

(This from February 2019 issue of New Democracy, an Article by Mrigank)

Ever since AAP government has taken over the reins of National Capital Territory of Delhi, it has been propagating its achievements in many fields including education and health. Many progressive individuals too are taken in by this trumpeting. The Government claims that it has reformed the school education system and now government schools are doing better than private schools and results have improved. Since so was not visible in reality, an investigation into the claims was warranted. In this light, PDSU has done a survey in two schools of Sagarpur, Delhi. There was also some information available on the sites of education directorate and some other sources on the web. These are the basis of the facts used in this article.

Stratification

Some of the main changes done by this Government includes stratification of students right at the age of 10 or 11 i.e. class VI onwards. Children have been divided into three groups, initially called Pratibha, Nishtha and Vishwas. This was done based on a separate examination testing their ability to read and write English. Better students were put in Pratibha section, middle ones in Nishtha and lower ones in Vishwas. Later Vishwas was termed neo nisthta and then merged with Nishtha. Students were thus put in separate sections with different teachers. Not just different teachers but with different syllabi too, and different examinations. While he Pratibha children are taught full syllabus with prescribed books, Nishtha children are taught less numbers of chapters. They are given books called ‘Pragati’ books, which are basically activity and workbooks. They were initially published by an NGO called Pratham. Now they are prescribed by the Government in schools of entire Delhi. The profit of the publishing NGO can be seen clearly. The supposed idea behind this was to help students to improve their levels.

This classification has many disastrously adverse effects. One, this enhances the discrimination already prevalent. As it is the people from poorer socio-economic background are forced to send their children to government schools, where despite well qualified teachers, teaching standard is poor due to lack of facilities. And number of such children forms majority of school going children.

Secondly, it discounts child psychology. When children living in the same locality, studying in same school are labelled as meritorious and non-meritorious it will only generate complexes in the children. Some students will consider themselves better than others and others will inculcate an inferiority complex. These students will not see eye to eye.

With different syllabi and different examinations, students in different categories and sections of the same class (e.g. 6th Standard) will learn differently. Students who were not so good in the beginning will be stamped forever as poor students as they will not get a chance to be better as they will be taught differently. And after VIII when they will reach the next class, they will have to face the full syllabus, which is designed with assumptions that students have learnt entire syllabus of the past. They will find it difficult to cope and their backwardness will be perpetuated. We usually see that in class IX marks wise top strata gets science, next commerce and bottom one opts for Arts and humanities. But now, effectively, this selection will be done in class VI itself. Selection of streams will be done right from the children of the age of 10-11 years itself when they might not even be knowing what is happening.

Moreover, its declared objectives that it will enable children to improve does not seem to be coming true in practice. (See Table 1) One would expect that this classification will result in getting more students in Pratibha section in next classes. But the data reflects otherwise. The data show that this number is either constant or worsens. We have seen that schools nearby working-class localities, slums etc. are even worse off. In many schools Pratibha section has not even formed or is very small.

Thus, this stratification has only increased discrimination already present in the education system and it will lead to unnecessary superiority complex to some and dejecting inferiority to most, and will lead to dehumanization of children. It reminds one of colonial era. This is a new apartheid policy.

Pushing Children out of regular school system

Another big change that has been done has resulted in pushing the students out of regular school system. An upper age limit has been imposed after ninth class. Children failing in IX were forced to register for ‘patrachar” system of Delhi govt. This was done without actually explaining to the students or parents. They were asked to sit with class IX students. But patrachar exam that was held was of Xth. Anyone with some common sense can see that students who failed in IXth, sitting again in IXth and giving exam for Xth will obviously fare badly. And this is exactly what happened. In year 2017 result was merely 4% and in many schools 100% students failed. But now these students are not students of regular schools. For readmission they have to seek Transfer Certificate (T.C.) from Patrachar and they cannot be admitted in X, and for IX they are overage. Thus, they are forced out of the school system. Delhi government has an agreement with NIOS and students are asked to register there. While Delhi Government bears expenses for registration, examination fee is to be paid by students.

Among working class, there is a common problem of moving to and fro between native place and Delhi. This adds lag years in children’s education. With this upper age limit in force, these children too are getting out of regular school system. And conditions are worse for girls. When they are forced out, many parents do not even think it necessary to enrol them in open schools. But they are either sent back to native place or parents try to marry them off.

Now the screened and filtered children reach class X so results will obviously be better. These are results after throwing out majority of students. The AAP govt pats its back for this apparent improvement in results. Let us further analyse the results. Table 2 shows results of class X and Table 3 that of XII. It can be easily seen that number of students appearing for class X is constantly decreasing. And in 2018, results were also only 68.90%. but if we compare with 2013, number of students passed in 2018 is about 47.83% of number of students that passed in 2013, which is less than half. Even in 2017 it was 72% only. The reason for the apparent better figure is obvious, students have already been filtered. And all this is after Minister of Education has spent months in Finland, and many selected Teachers have been trained there. One can easily see where the education budget is being spent.

Similarly, if one glances at the results of XII, many interesting facts can be revealed. Result of class XII is always worse than that of X. If we compare the number of students who appeared in X two years ago, we can see that number is constantly decreasing since 2015, the years of effect of the present ‘reformed system’.

Some basic issues ignored for show off

Amidst this propaganda, certain basic issues have not been addressed. What is apparent is that at many places new buildings have been erected. Though they made unnecessary rooms at places, but did renovate old creaky buildings and increased capacity of some. But in these beautiful buildings, basic facilities are not available. Toilets used by students are not useably clean. There are more students than the designed capacity of rooms and number of desks available. In many schools three to four students have been forced to sit at the desks meant for two. In this congestion, they are not even able to write. In a school in Bindapur, there was a complaint of leaking of a roof. Tender was floated for replacing the roof of the entire school. The result- now four roof are leaking. One is well aware of the corruption in civil department.

There is absolutely no attempt is seen to improve Students Teacher ratio. As we can see from above para, a class as usually about 60 to 100 students which is far more than the ideal ratio of 1:20 or a maximum of 1:35. How are they being taught; how will they listen to the teachers is not the bothering the government. There ae many schools which do not have teachers of particular subjects. Many times, the same teacher is asked to teach in two schools due to shortage of teachers. The effects of this do not need an explanation.

All the students are given Mid-Day meal up to class VIII. The quality of the same has been questioned many a times. Many times, children fell sick, rats jumped out of food. But there is no improvement seen in this. Some NGOs are given the contract of supplying Mid Day meal. Instead of this if women of areas are given this job, and it is made compulsory that teachers and principal will eat the same food with students, it will be helpful.

Another issue is of the School Management Committee (SMC) which is mandatory under RTE Act. It must have the local MLA into it. But usually it has a representative of MLA, who is a local domineering person, with very little idea about education. But it interferes in teaching and insults both teachers and principal.

Adding layers

This is another dreadful feature of AAP Govt.'s education reform. While all the time progressive section of people have been fighting for “equal education for all” and abolishing dual education policy (actually multi-layered), this government it out to increase layers. First in announces opening of 54 Model schools. Now they have opened five “schools of excellence”. These schools will have 2 sections per class- up to 8th class 25 students per section and after that 40 students per section. That means only 250 students in lower classes and 400 students in higher classes. Here, students from other areas can also be taken. It will further add to discrimination and will enable influential people to get good education for their children at government expenses. This will add a further layer to this education system, that too by government as a matter of policy and “reforms”. There is also talk of infiltrating NGOs into these schools. This will mean a clever introduction of PPP system.

Pushing Agenda of WTO/WB

The Delhi Government has started a Mission Buniyad. They give basic training of reading and writing in summer and extra time. This may look good at first glance. During this mission teachers were asked to execute the training manuals provided to them strictly and they were monitored. Idea here is it merely makes the children literate and not educated. Language cannot be learnt in isolation. It has to be learnt with experiences and reading different things. This is part of the imperialist agenda and worldwide such programmes are on. The idea is to create literate but not educated students, who will serve as cheap labour force to MNCs.

Secondly, there is added emphasis on vocational courses. It only helps children to acquire some skills. They are deprived of learning of different subjects which may impart some intellectual content. Students coming from working class background are likely to be part of the same. It implies that children of working class will never be part of higher echelon. They will only learn skills which are required to work in MNCs. Division of mental and physical labour has been done right here. Ministry of HRD runs a program called National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF). This is likely to be made compulsory for jobs in unorganized sectors in future. And children leaving schools system before VIII or after XI will not get this certificate. So, all of them will be categorized as unskilled labour and will be out of jobs, even if they have acquired some skill otherwise. AAP government has been promoting this. It has opened many proclaimed “world class” skill development centres. Here again, NGOs are being given a bigger role.

Infringement

This government plans to install CCTV cameras into class rooms to monitor teaching. And parents will be given a smartphone app to see online the teaching process. This is infringement of a teacher’s right to teach. Teachers will be scared and will only formally or mechanically be teaching. Any creativity, innovation, imparting of values will be done away with. While it may be all right to have CCTV cameras in the campus for security purposes, having them in class rooms and online transmission is highly undesirable.

Increase in budget and PPP

Another boast of this government is that it has increased education budget significantly. While this is a fact but a large chunk of it is not being spent in education. A whopping Rs. 670 crores are kept for CCTV cameras. Another 75 crore is kept to buy tabs for the teachers. Govt. has started siphoning off money to NGOs and coaching institutions in the name of improving ‘poor students. BCL has been contracted to teach spoken English. Many schools’ grounds have been given to these coaching institutions for running coaching classes on holidays. These institutions are asked to coach 50% students free and the rest can be charges for making profit.

Government has not bothered for fee waiver of examination fee charged by CBSE and NIOS. Instead of providing assistance, it has magnanimously opted to be guarantor for education loan. This will both help and legitimize high charging private institutes for higher learning, it will help both financing banks and Institutions.

Pratham has already been mentioned for its books. Many other NGOs have been given a prominent place in policy planning. Pratham officials have been given a very prominent and decisive role. This too is interesting that some officials of Pratham are also advising Union MHRD. Govt. has engaged a private organization Centre Square Foundation (CSF) to prepare grading reports of schools. CSF propagates that government should not run schools but schools should be left to market. government can give some coupons/vouchers to poor students to partly meet the education expenses.

Conclusion

It can be seen that the claim of improvement is actually only a propaganda. Delhi Govt. has further destroyed school education. Meaningful education is going further out of reach of common children of Delhi coming from working class and lower middle class. As it is, elites have dominated use of good education as they can send their children to expensive private schools. And for most of the rest, government schools were the only option. In government schools, despite good qualified teachers, due to lack of proper facilities and atmosphere education was not up to the mark. These students were always behind students of private students not because of abilities but because of lack of facilities. But now with stratification, the scenario will be worse. Most will never be able to compete with elite students in higher classes and shall be cursed to be backward. And this stamp will be put at the age of 10 years. Children who already had poor chances of going ahead, will now be further pushed into backwardness.

Secondly a very big section has been put out of the regular school system, much in the line of prescription of WTO/WB. And Delhi government is sacrificing students to artificially raise its results.

In fact, this government is much too keen to follow the liberalization agenda under different garbs. It has transformed the system to produce only literate students- cheap workforce for MNCs, encourage PPP and NGOization of Education. It is not addressing real issues like proper student teacher ratio, availability of sufficient teachers of all subjects and classes nor is bothered about recruiting permanent teachers. Availability of basic amenities like clean available toilets, teaching aids, well equipped labs, computer labs etc. is also not ensured. It has not even bothered to think as how can one improve the standard of all the kids and improve entire education.

Some model schools, “schools of excellence” and new buildings are only for showcasing and covering up the real issue. It has no vision for quality free education available and accessible for all.

Table 1 PDSU Survey of 2 Schools in Sagarapur
	School 1		School 2
Class	Pratibha	Nishtha	Pratibha	Nishtha
6	166	157	82	167
7	150	149	52	184
8	83	172	53	183

Table 2 Result of Class X
Year	Total Students	Pass %	Pass Students
2013	197934	99.46	196858
2014	180203	98.81	178067
2015	140086	95.81	134223
2016	140638	89.25	125526
2017	155263	92.44	143525
2018	136663	68.90	94160

Table 3 Result of Class XII
Year	Total Students	Pass %	Students in X two tears ago	Difference in absolute and %
2013	139003	88.65
2014	166257	88.67
2015	140191	88.11
2016	131354	88.91
2017	121681	88.27	140086	18405 (13.13)
2018	112826	90.64	140638	27812 (19.77)