The Draft National Education Policy (NEP) document, released soon after the new government was formed, has been a matter of much discussion and debate across the country.  The document is an amalgamation of disjoint ideas which are neither concretised nor fleshed out, and the policy comes across as “hanging in the air” and not grounded in Indian reality.  The main thrust of the policy is towards centralization, major restructuring of the school and higher educational systems, and drawing upon ancient Indian traditions to provide directions for the future.  If one reads between the lines, one realizes that the NEP document is actually geared towards facilitating the acceleration and legitimisation of the process of privatization of education.  This will further marginalise the weaker sections of society and delink them from mainstream educational processes.  Not engaging seriously with the existing educational structures and not paying attention to previous educational policies are other lacunae in this policy.  The policy attempts to invent a new educational system without setting out to reform the existing one, which is projected to be a positive aspect of the policy, but is in fact is its most problematic feature.

The policy advocates starting formal schooling at the age of three.  This is exactly what is happening in the private school system today, where students are being taught the alphabet and counting at the age of three.  Several studies indicate that  burdening children at the primary school level actually encourages rote learning and suppresses their creativity.  The document advocates a three-language scheme where children will simultaneously learn three languages with equal ease.  In theory it may be possible to learn three languages simultaneously, however in a country where children struggle to learn even one language properly, how will introducing two more languages in the very beginning help?  On a another note, the NEP document proposes introducing the semester system in schools, while we are still facing difficulties  with the semester system in colleges, where its management has become a major challenge.  This document does not even attempt to engage with the problems of the semester system or anticipate the hurdles in switching from the annual to the semester system for schools.

There is a  great deal of emphasis in the NEP document on teaching the classical Indian languages, namely Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali and Persian, in schools. Currently, the major problem we are facing is in developing the regional languages and in generating educational material for technical subjects in the regional languages: a momentum that we lost about twenty years ago. Instead of bringing that process back on-track, the policy talks about teaching classical Indian languages which are rarely used or spoken by people.  Along a similar thread, the NEP document talks about reviving the glorious traditions of the ancient Indian educational system  (specifically referencing the universities of Takshashila and Nalanda), but only talks about certain aspects of those traditions,  glossing over the fact that inclusivity was not part of the education system in olden times.  In fact, the need of the hour is to introspect and embark upon a critical appraisal of these traditions, however the NEP document does not go beyond their glorification, and it is not clear how those ideas will guide us into the future.

The NEP policy envisages a major restructuring of higher educational systems: it talks about setting up new institutions and universities with a large number of on-campus students, dismantling the mechanism of affiliation of colleges with universities and instead making them autonomous bodies, winding up of technical training institutions such as medical and engineering colleges and integrating them with these large enrollment-based universities.  All these ideas do not seem to have a clearly thought out implementation plan.  Currently, these motifs are represented in the private sector universities and this policy document seems to be encouraging these trends in a subtle fashion.  In fact it is interesting that the policy talks about treating the public and private sectors at par – we have seen the disastrous effect of the government’s enfranchisement of the private sector in the domain of public health, and the same disaster seems to be hinted at in this policy about education.

The policy advocates encouraging religious organizations to patronise education in the manner they deem fit and is instead  silent on issues of secular community participation in the running of educational institutions.  The document also goes into specific details of  what the structure of the Board of Governors for private institutions should be,  and promotes the view that private owners should be free to appoint the governing body, giving them an unwarranted free hand.  Education has been deliberately placed in the concurrent Central and State list to accommodate specific regional needs.  The centralized control of all aspects of the education sector by the proposed Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog headed by the prime minister, is therefore impractical.

On the positive side, entry and exit at different levels and in different ways in the school as well the higher education system will help students remain engaged with the education process; for the first time a policy document explicitly states that primary school teacher salaries should be on par with teachers at the middle and senior school levels; there is an emphasis on a broad-based liberal arts undergraduate education, where technical subject streams are not completely separated from the humanities and social science; the setting up of a National Research Foundation to oversee and fund research for all fields of science, technology, social sciences, arts and humanities in colleges and Universities is a welcome move; effectively using technology for education is a much-needed reform and is  brought up in the policy. However, how to implement these ingredients has not been spelt out more clearly.

Integrating education with development and models of development is very important, and hence the earlier educational policies  were closely linked with development issues.  However, in this document the connection with development is missing.  This policy outlines a simplistic measure of increasing enrollment in higher education institutes to 50%  by 2035! Given the already high rate of educated unemployed in the country, where will these graduates get absorbed?  Indian society is  divided into different vertical segments in income groups, castes, urban and rural communities, and horizontally we have a variety of languages and cultures. We need to address these societal divisions and contextualise education.  The required emphasis on fostering critical and analytical aspects at all educational levels, is missing from this policy document.

At the end, I would like to add that this draft policy should be widely discussed across the country.  The government should now spend enough time and engage with educationists and citizens’ groups and hold wide-ranging discussions to undertake a critical appraisal of the policy document.

Arvind is a Professor of Physics and the Director (Officiating) of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali. He is also on the Editorial Board of Dialogue.

This article first appeared in “The Tribune” on July 12, 2019.

The other articles in this series can be found here.

A child and a machine

Once when I was participating in a rural Tamil Nadu Science Forum event, interacting with children of middle school age, we had a round of each student talking of what s/he wanted to `become’ on growing up. Manikandan, a 11 year old boy, said he wanted to become a scientist. Rather pleased, I asked him what he wished to do as a scientist; he said he wanted to make an idly machine, and all the children laughed. It turned out that his mother was running a single parent family, making idlies and selling them at the bus stand. This was a natural ambition for a boy who was watching the everyday toils of his mother and helping her. Does India offer ways of realising such an ambition?

Manikandan made me think: what were the chances that he would actually get admission to an institute of technology, learn to build machines? Even if he did, would the science education received at school and the engineering curriculum build in him the needed capacity? After such education, would he even want to build an idly machine?

The shape of science education in the country and the attitude to technology in school education has had only negative answers for Manikandans.  The Draft New Education Policy (DNEP) has only a little to say on science education at school and the attitude to technology expressed in it seems to foretell only further disappointment for the numerous Manikandans in the country.

The equation: Tech = ICT

In the DNEP, we find a great deal of talk extolling technology-based teaching / learning, but it seems to equate technology in school with the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Chapter 18 of the DNEP is devoted to the use of technology in education. It classifies the use of technology into four categories: teacher preparation; classroom processes of teaching, learning and evaluation; improving access to education for disadvantaged groups; planning, administration and management of the entire education system. All this clearly pertains to the use of ICT in the education system.

Is the use of technology in school only about bringing Internet connectivity to all schools, the use of multi-media, videos and hyperlinked material, so that distant voices can beam down content, textbooks can be supplemented by the extensive knowledge available easily on the World Wide Web, assessment is made flexible, and data easily collected ? Why is it that mention of technology in education rarely refers to lathes, foundry or good old agriculture?

Rather interestingly, while policy documents and governments always refer to S&T, coupling science and technology together, such thinking remains alien to our school classrooms.  Indeed, if there is one domain that calls for new curricular action in school, it is that of technology.

On the other hand, there is an increasing perception that 21st century modes of production will allow for small industries created by groups of individuals to innovate in ways that demand training in S&T. The East Asian and Western European countries have tried to integrate technology education into school science education, and the study of technology in relation to society is also given curricular stature in (some of) these systems. In Sweden, for instance, every high school has a workshop that typically includes a foundry and carpentry, and science laboratories are integrated with the workshop.  The Chinese school system is currently transforming itself to such a model.

The questions we need to ask

If we are to speak of technology in education, what should be our understanding of technology? What should be the attitude to technology in the curriculum, and in teaching / learning practices? What attitude to technology is inculcated in the students?

School typically teaches the student to see technology as given, (as a potential consumer), and not anything s/he can participate in. Science education is compulsory, but has little to say about the relationship between science and technology. Social studies do not at all refer to how modern societies relate to technology. Our children do not develop a healthy and yet critical attitude to technology, one that is based on principled understanding. Technology assessment is not part of the curriculum even in the prestigious institutions of technology. All this together suggest that we are not even asking the right questions about technology in the context of education, let alone have good systemic answers.

When it comes to the use of technology for educational purposes, there are more questions to ask:

1. How does technology help the educational purposes that schools seek to achieve? What forms of technology do so?
2. How can technology enhance the educational experiences that can be provided to achieve these purposes?
3. How can the education system contribute to the development of such technology?
4. How do we ensure that these educational purposes are indeed being accomplished?

The author is not competent to provide good answers to any of these questions. What we can hope for is an articulation of some guiding principles that can help us answer these and related questions.

Technology in the science classroom

The 1986 Policy on Education asserts: all areas of development are science and technology based and for that we need experts, middle – order workers and scientifically literate citizens. It goes on to discuss how the curriculum should be designed: … for conscious internalization of healthy work ethos.  This will provide valuable manpower for economic growth as well as for ideal citizenship to live effectively in the science/technology based society.

The National Curriculum Framework 2005 lays emphasis on the process of science and critical inquiry. The DNEP singles out the inculcation of the scientific temper and critical thinking as the purpose of science education.  It says that science education will inculcate scientific temper and encourage evidence-based thinking throughout the curriculum. Evidence-based reasoning and the scientific method will be incorporated throughout the school curriculum.

Such emphasis on the process of science and the nurturing of the scientific temper is welcome, but these could also be `umbrella terms’. In the context of our discussion, we must point out that there is no explicit attitude to technology and working with the material world articulated in such a formulation.

The science classroom is the best place to introduce technology to students. This cannot be achieved by “lessons” on X-technology or Y-technology, to be learnt as information items and memorized. In fact, along with a factual and conceptual understanding of natural phenomena, students also need fluency in working with the material world in a way that builds on experimentation, observation, prediction and critical inquiry. Technology is best learnt by doing, by active engagement with material and energy conversion. Working with metal, wood and soil is essential for building a relationship with nature that is purposeful and wise. This needs the active and simultaneous engagement of the mind, the heart and the hands.

Articulating the goals of science education to include active hands-on engagement with the material world implies according primacy to wood and metal, to leaves and stones, to life forms and crystals: not by seeing them as pictures or video animations, (or worse, reading their descriptions in books) but touching, feeling and working with them. This is essential for developing an integrated feel for science and technology.

The DNEP refers to experiential learning in many places. It promises that children have “fun” when the learning is “hands-on”; but this is very different from the deliberate engagement with material for study that we are referring to. Even at the risk of stating the obvious, let us note that experiential learning is not the same as experimentation; the latter lies at the heart of science learning. Coupled with experimentation, an emphasis on quantification is a characteristic of science. Measuring, estimating, approximating, calculating and model building are everyday processes for any form of science, and these again are habits to be inculcated in the learning child, not only for sharpening her own abilities but also towards building a society that can critically engage with issues of technology use and its impact on the environment.

Students need to perceive the rootedness of technology in science, as also the technological potential embedded in science. They need to understand and internalize the fact that technology is the conversion of material and energy in different forms by doing work, by expenditure of energy, and that this is based on sound scientific principles. Such emphasis in science classrooms could offer an important direction for the future of our children.

Apart from hands-on experience, science pedagogy itself needs to actively make connections with technology. For instance, we rarely teach Pascal’s law by pointing out that this is indeed the principle that literally enables huge trucks to be held up on mere rubber tyres pumped with air. The sheer wonder of air holding up a heavy truck is important for the learning child, and further, the tremendous opening up of possibilities in the mind is critical for planting the seeds of technological innovation. Similarly, biodegradation is a phenomenon to be understood, but it is also important to see the possibilities of composting in technological terms. This is a connection mostly missing in our science curriculum, and a careful reworking can make science learning not only immensely enjoyable to children, but also useful to them and to society.

If we could reorient science education at school placing material handling, experimentation and quantification at the centre, the potential benefits would be immense. Providing linkages for schools with technology institutions requires more re-orientation on our part than great resource investment. A visit to a bicycle shop or a motor garage has immense educational value. Agriculture and animal husbandry are practised all around, and can be seen as opportunities for “science tours”. Indeed, within a few kilometres of every school, some manufacturing or industrial processing activity does take place, and active linkages for school and science curriculum with these institutions can be made. Science laboratories can be integrated with workshop practice, as in Scandinavian schools. Even while we wait for such a possibility to become a reality for our children, we can begin by opening windows and doors to simply make use of opportunities for technological education that are present around schools. This only calls for an enabling mechanism to be set up in terms of curriculum, syllabus, school functioning and new practices in teaching and learning.

Every time someone speaks of ICT and mentions how children take to such technology, how 4-year olds can operate mobiles when adults cannot, it is worth remembering that for crores of Indian children, working with wood and metal comes naturally too. They have always been good at handling any technology with their nimble fingers, not only mobile phone gadgets. It is the education system that has never taken this ability seriously.

The hands and minds disconnect

Why is it that such a disconnect between conceptual science learning and a hands-on culture of making things, accepted for so long, as a matter of course? Is it perhaps impossible to achieve an integration of the two? Are we perhaps talking of a new idea so revolutionary that nobody has thought of it before?

On the contrary, this is a very old idea, whose seeds were sown in India long ago. In the 1930’s Mahatma Gandhi advocated Nai Talim, a new style of education for a new country. Gandhi and Kumarappa built a curricular framework on a principle that called for integration of work and education. The village-based society they envisioned would not see education as preparation for entering the labout force post-education, but as education through work. In Nai Talim, work raises questions inside the child’s mind: why does X work and not Y? How does material get transformed? Science provides answers, and the child is able to see how conceptual learning improves her work and results. This is admittedly a crude summary of the idea, but the critical point to note here is that Gandhi was not speaking of vocational education or work apprenticeship but education through work. What is relevant to this discussion is that such a viewpoint carries the potential to build a natural and healthy attitude to (basic) technology and the understanding of how material and energy are transformed through work.

The country chose a different trajectory in education, and the Gandhian vision of education was sidelined along with the Gandhian vision of development. The fear that bringing work into schools would merely perpetuate caste hierarchies was real. On the other hand, a brahmanical attitude that privileges intellectual work over physical work took root in school education.  By now, theoretical insights and conceptual understanding are seen as important, hands-on activity gets mentioned only in the context of making classes fun. In practice, memorization and rote learning have taken over, and concepts take a backseat as well. The DNEP reminds us that students in ancient Indian pathashalas were famous for remarkable feats of memory, so are our current toppers in examinations. Neither the Gandhian vision of work in education nor the Nehruvian vision of inculcating the scientific temper in children have been realized in our school system.

With such a history, it is perhaps not surprising that recent discussions in the DNEP on technology in education equates technology with ICT use. ICT is “clean” technology. Here is technology that is not messy, one does not need to muddy one’s hands, no need to deal with hot metal, or worry about errors in measurement. Even the dangers relate to the mental world, not the material one.

The immense power of ICT

I am well aware that the idiosyncratic stance taken here on the nature of technology in the science classroom does injustice to the tremendous potential contained in the use of ICT in school education.

ICT does have a disruptive power that needs to be harnessed.  (However, we should still questioning the uncritical fashion in which the DNEP seems to root for “disruptive technologies”; what assumptions underlie such acceptance?) We are all acutely aware of the tyranny of the textbook in our schools. ICT offers highly flexible modes of navigating educational material, through the use of hyperlinks and multiple windows. Thus, it can break into the linear structure of our textbooks. It can also tremendously help in localizing and even personalizing content, which is most welcome in a scenario where textbooks and curricula can create a false uniformity. The combination of these two features, namely, flexible navigation and personalized content, can open doors to new pathways of learning. Consider a child interested in light, exploring art and photography on one side and physics on the other. Such breaking down of compartments is natural in ICT-enhanced education, and can be of tremendous value in situations where a teacher is unable to do this.

Once we start envisioning the possibilities, we can see that ICT not only has the potential to enrich our education but indeed can also provide a tool for educational objectives that we cannot accomplish without ICT. As an instance of the latter, consider the question: how would the world look and behave if the acceleration on earth due to gravity were just a tiny bit less? It is hard to imagine such a thing, much harder to quantify what we imagine. A computer simulation can achieve this very well, can make us think, and indeed lead us to more related questions and open-ended exploration. In a mathematics class, we could not only graph a cubic polynomial, but also pull the curve down, predict how the quadratic coefficient would change, and verify it. Try doing this on paper! Consider zooming into topographic maps in geography. Consider underwater explorations, visits to museums in another continent.

Another critical dimension on which ICT can be immensely helpful is teacher education and in teacher professional development, and this has been rightly emphasized in the DNEP. However, both the dangers of equating ICT and technology use and the potential of integrating technology into science equation need to be  integrated into teacher education.

All such singing glories of ICT should always be viewed with healthy suspicion. The dangers of unsafe use of Internet are far too real and immediate to be ignored. We also need to be very wary of the seductive nature of ICT, especially when it is translated to mean instant access to fast-moving images, whether for entertainment or for education. While visualisation of abstractions is a meaningful educational challenge, instant packaged mobile visuals can disengage thought and abstraction, which can harm learning not only at that instant, but for future as well, by causing a craving for such quick answers, making it harder to think. Hands-on, minds-off is a real and present danger in ICT use and the classroom cannot afford to ignore this risk.

Even more problematic is the DNEP’s advocacy of ICT for improving access to marginalised communities. If access to quality education is denied to the socio-economically oppressed, the roots of such exclusion lie elsewhere.

In conclusion

To conclude, the DNEP is an opportunity for us to revisit the role of technology in school, underlining the need to integrate it into science education, but in terms of engagement with the material world. ICT has immense potential, but equating technology use in school with ICT is dangerous. The following points seem worth emphasizing:

1. ICT and its visual, simulational and interactive ability does offer a tremendous opportunity for empowerment in education, but this is only one dimension for a Technology Vision in Education.
2. We need to see students as constructors of knowledge and technology, and not merely consumers of the potential offered by technology.
3. Working with nature and material is essential in science education.
4. Technology can play a significant role in engaging students in learning, but this needs to be understood carefully in context and used wisely.

The mathematician and educator W W Sawyer wrote:

                   Do things, make things, notice things, arrange things, and only then, reason about things.

Ways of thinking are shaped by ways of doing in the material world. This is a fundamental tenet that discussions on science education and technology in education can ill afford to forget.

R Ramanujam is a Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. 

Earlier versions of this article have appeared in Voices, the journal of teacher education, NCERT, and in the Krishnamurti Journal.

The other articles in this series can be found here.

The Draft National Education Policy has underlined the importance of public investment to build an equitable and high quality education system.  The policy approach on investment in education suggests an increase from the current 10 percent of overall public expenditure of education to 20 percent over a 10-year period.  If implemented, it means that the governments would have to allocate one out of every five rupee of public expenditure on education by the end of the ten-year period. Assuming that the growth of public expenditure keeps up with the growth of GDP (both in nominal terms), the share of public expenditure on education to GDP should increase. The impact of according a higher priority to education would be to enhance the resource envelope and release the resource constraint which has been an important roadblock in implementation of Right to Education (RTE) for all children in India. Whether this will translate into reality or remain a pipedream remains a moot question. However, even in its design, the financing issue requires greater clarity and thought, as we argue below.

What is the normative? The devil is in the detail

Any financial estimate of resource requirements needs to be based on a understanding of what is desirable and what it would cost. It implies detailing out the physical norms and financials required for the same, so as create a normative framework. . This is a well-established principle and one that has been the basis of most costing models followed worldwide. A clearly defined component-wise norm is necessary for transparency, accountability and feedback. For the estimates provided in the Draft NEP the underlying normative assumptions have not been published/ spelt out. Unless one were to engage and debate with the design and construction of normative that underlies the overall countrywide estimates referred in the draft NEP, the latter will not hold water.

It would be instructive to recall that the trajectory of educational expenditure to GDP in Kothari Commission Report was based on a view of the required per child spending and the components of spending in terms of teacher and non-teacher costs, pupil teacher ratio, assumptions on population growth, priorities to different levels of educations, etc [1].   Over the years, the estimates have grown in detail and sophistication, such as to better translate the social vision on educational development (Tapas Majumdar Committee, 1999). The overall countrywide benchmark of an expenditure path laid down in the draft NEP – whether expressed as a proportion of GDP or as a proportion of public expenditure – makes sense when it is derived from the normative estimate of what is desirable and the gaps that it is supposed to meet.  These details are missing, even though public discussion and scrutiny of this information, and a feedback is vital.

One may also point out here that the financing of education is an important component of public policy and merits a separate chapter rather than being pushed to a sketchy addendum in this important document.

Too little, too late?

One of the stated objectives of NEP is to “achieve access and participation in free and
compulsory quality school education for all children in the age group of 3-18 years by 2030.”  There is a proposal to amend the RTE Act to include “availability of free and compulsory quality pre-primary education”. “Availability of free and compulsory quality education for Grades 9-12 will also be made an integral part of the RTE Act.”  The suggestion of the NEP to extend the RTE to secondary as well as pre-school children is a welcome step, if only, it is backed with adequate resources, preparation and planning.  The ambit and coverage of justiciable right to education would be extended massively. Has it been provided for? Not really!

In a recent study, we have estimated the requirement for financing the right to education of children between the age group 6-14 years of age (Bose, Ghosh and Sardana, 2019a). This is the elementary school age group. Our objective is to estimate the normative resource requirement for universalization using a set of reasonable norms.  Unit level data on schools is the basis for estimation as the RTE norms must apply to every school. The population of out of school children, estimated at roughly 15 million children are included in the calculations. In trying to arrive at normative resource requirement, component-wise financial and physical norms are discussed and evaluated.  It may be noted here that the last official estimate of financial requirements for universalization goes back to 2009-10, around the time when the RTE Act came into being.  Despite a clear clause in the RTE Act on the responsibilities of the Central government to prepare financial estimates for the implementation of the provisions of the Act[2], there are no recent estimates of resource requirements. Our study may be seen as an attempt to address this lacuna.

How do our estimates compare with the suggestions of draft NEP? Table 1 puts the two estimates side by side. The additional requirement for elementary education as per our estimates – when normalized with overall public expenditure – stands at 4.9 percent in 2017-18 [3].  That is, over and above the existing spending on elementary education, an additional 4.9 percent of the overall public expenditure (of 2017-18 level) would be needed to close the various gaps. This would be  necessary to fill the teacher gaps, bring about a parity in pay around a decent salary norm, run teacher education institutions and teacher training programmes, provide for an adequate management structure, provide for maintenance of schools, learning resources and students’ entitlements etc.  Besides adequately providing for those who are in public and aided schools, the estimates include the cost of inclusion of out of school children. There is substantial progress needed, if the children are to be provided with an education that is worthy of being called so rather than a dysfunctional system [4].

Table 1: A Comparison of Additional Requirement as percentage of overall Public Expenditure per annum

Compared to the additional requirement of 4.9 percent of expenditure for elementary school level, the draft NEP has proposed the magnitude of 4.1 percent of expenditure (plus one-time expenditure on capital creation of 0.4 percent) on entire school education [5]. Thus, a lower quantum of resources than what has been estimated by us as a normative benchmark for elementary level only is now proposed to be spread across a far greater number of pupil and expenditure heads. The allocations per student will be squeezed [6]. If we are committed to RTE of equitable quality this appears to be an underestimate at first glance.

Further, given the glide path in allocations suggested – one percent increase every year – even the increased magnitude of 4.1 percent will kick in only by the end of the next decade (2030) as per the proposals of the draft policy.  Whereas, the need for raising allocations is imminent and cannot wait for ten more years.

From the resources point of view, the essential idea of the RTE is to ensure the facilities of schooling in a time-bound and complementary manner so that the basic entitlement of every child is upheld. Both in terms of magnitude and timeline, the proposed increase seems inadequate when compared to the lofty objectives.

The Unequal Position of the States

For several states, the size of the overall pie available to them, rather than prioritization of expenditure, is at issue. Take the case of Bihar. Reprioritization of expenditure to 20 percent of the overall budget will not make any significant difference to the expenditure. The pie itself has to be increased substantially, and in an urgent manner.  Between 2001-2 and 2015-16, expenditure on education (including art and culture) averaged about 18 to 19 percent of total expenditure (RBI, Study of State Finances) [7].  And yet, actual expenditure on elementary education in Bihar is only a fourth of the total resource requirement on it, as per our estimates [8].  There is need to spend on multiple fronts which require substantial capital and revenue expenditures.  Unlike some the other states, Bihar still has a very high percentage of enrolled children accessing public schools.  By strengthening the public school system, there needs to be a conscious attempt to pre-empt the exit to low quality unaffordable private solutions. Besides, there is a very large segment of children who are out of school including children who have dropped out, whose education squarely is the responsibility of the state. Population growth in Bihar is one of the highest indicative of need for further expansion in the future. There is a very stark disparity between needs and the revenues of the state.

Bihar is not alone, though it is certainly the most extreme case. In fact, we have identified 16 states – 8 general category states and 8 special category states – that require special central assistance as the gap between requirement and actual expenditures is large relative to the revenue base (including the present Central transfers). We have argued that for these 16 states, elementary education today requires a special thrust. This is imperative if the objective of universalisation of elementary education is to be fulfilled, as per the RTE mandate.   The quantum of the fiscal transfer to the 16 states would need to be substantial, estimated at 1.14 percent of GDP (Bose, Ghosh and Sardana, 2019b).

The new NEP has to engage with the different layers of financing. The sub-national financial issues and center-state distributions are central to the idea of a national policy if it is to forge the long-run development goals. How can there be greater parity such that every child irrespective of where she is born (and to which family she is born) can have good quality education? How can the financing move towards greater equity? Unless the disadvantages and complexities are recognized upfront and addressed, the policy would not be able to usher in any substantial change.

Notes:

[1]  See chapter 19, Educational Finance.

[2] Refer to Section 7 of the RTE Act.

[3] As a proportion of GDP, additional resource requirement works out to 1.4 percent (all-India estimates) for the year 2017-18.  This is inclusive of 7^th PC hike on wages of public sector employees. (See Chapter 4, Section 4.5 in Bose, Ghosh and Sardana, 2019a).

[4] CAG (2017) speaks about the deficits and the non-compliance in the implementation of RTE.

[5] An additional 1.4 percent of total government expenditure is proposed for early childhood education in draft NEP.

[6] It may be pointed out that the normative per student recurrent requirement are in a reasonable range (Bose, Ghosh and Sardana, 2019a). For the year 2015-16, it is estimated at around Rs.23,200  for general category states, on an average. Due to underlying differences in size of the schools and the mix of new to existing teachers, among other things, there is variability in normative per student recurrent requirement across states.

[7] In the recent period there seems to have been a slippage though not large in the priority accorded to education. The 14th Finance Commissions’s recommendations on intergovernmental transfers may have impacted the spending patterns of states, especially vis-à-vis social sector spending.

[8] Refer to Chapter 3 in Bose, Ghosh and Sardana, 2019a.

References:

Bose, S, P Ghosh and A Sardana (2019): “RTE and the Resource Requirements: The Way Forward,” NIPFP.

Bose, S, P Ghosh and A Sardana (2019):What Does the Right to Education Need to Achieve? Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 54, Issue No. 18, 04 May, 2019

CAG. (2017).  Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Implementation of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 for the year ended March 2016 (Report No. 23). New Delhi, Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development

GoI. (1966). Education Commission, Education and National Development (Also known as Kothari Commission), New Delhi, Delhi: Ministry of Education.

GoI. (1999). Expert Group Report on Financial Requirements for Making Elementary Education a Fundamental Right (also known as Tapas Majumdar Committee Report of 1999). New Delhi, Delhi: Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Sukanya Bose works at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi. Arvind Sardana is a member of the Social Science group, Eklavya, Madhya Pradesh.

The other articles in this series can be found here.