in india · i consider it a privilege to introduce this study to a discerning public. it is at once...

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The PROBE Teamin association with

Centre for Development Economics

I consider it a privilege to introduce this study to a discerning public. It is at once a reiteration of things known,

things remembered and a campaign to change them in the ways we would like to remember them in the future.

The authors’ collective has covered the populous states of north India in the quest for a diagnosis and a cure of

the educational condition.

The core of the report is the right of all children to elementary education. The assertion on their behalf is

unequivocal. The arguments in support are meticulously built in the introductory chapter. It is clear that universal

elementary education is first and foremost a constitutional directive. It is also a matter of popular demand. People

see that education provides the base for a person’s own well-being in the future, and also that of the immediate

community and the larger society. The role of universal education in a democracy – that of providing an educated

electorate – seems indisputable. The strongest rationale is that the education of all children is an imperative.

This concern for social justice informs the entire fabric of the report.

This report varies in a distinct way from those of the high-powered Education Commissions. It is not a public

report made to the government, but a people’s report made to Indian citizens. We hear the voices broadcast

without distortion or static.

The study is exemplary in more ways than one; armed with an authentic intent, the right set of questions and a

sensitive ear, a team of researchers have collated a report on primary education in the northern states. There is

passion in their venture: a passion for equity and social justice. But the presentation of facts is dispassionate,

objective, cool. Facts are stated with minimal comment. Explanation and analysis are based on observations

and what people say. The quotes from the responses of teachers, parents and children provide variety, texture

and tone. As one reads, one travels with the researcher to Banaskantha, Palamau, Mathura and Kullu, smells the

decaying school rooms, hears the boys and girls screaming out in chorus, inhales the dust of the durries in the

classroom, sees the hope in the eyes of the children as they clutch their slates.

This book is recommended to all people who feel concern about the dismal scenario of India’s school systems

and are looking for a way out of the impasse. If we, as a people, fail to recognize the importance of actually

enabling the children of India to have formal education for eight years at least, we would have betrayed the trust

that our children repose in us and the hope that they have for their future.

S. AnandalakshmyConsultant in Child Development and Education (former Director, Lady Irwin College, New Delhi)

Chennai16 October 1998

Elementary education as a fundamental right 1Introduction 1Why PROBE? 2The PROBE survey 2The case for universal elementary education 3A counter-argument 5Literacy, schooling and education 6Outline of the report 6

Elementary education in India : some facts and myths 8Some facts 8Some myths 14

Schooling and the family 18Parental views on education 19Educational hopes and the schooling system 26The challenge of regular attendance 28Schooling as a popular struggle 35

The school environment 38Infrastructural facilities 39Teacher resources 44Activity patterns 46Social discrimination 49

Teachers and society 53Introduction 53Village teachers — background and orientation 54Teachers’ concerns 58Accountability issues 62Teachers and the village community 65

Inside the classroom 68The burden of non-comprehension 68Far from the realities of life 71Information invasion 77MLLs: meaningless levels of learning 79Evaluation and examinations 80Coping with school 82

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Aspects of education management 83The management structure 84Operation Blackboard 86Incentive schemes 88The inspection system 89The school register 91Regional contrasts 93

Some recent developments 95School meals 95Shiksha karmis 97Alternative schooling 99Private schooling 102NGO initiatives 106Popular action 111

The schooling revolution in Himachal Pradesh 115What happened? 115Instant explanations 116Some field observations 117The foundations of success 121Concluding remarks 126

Change is possible 128

The schooling transition 129Improvement or decline? 129Two scenarios 131State inertia 131Resource crunch 135Soft options 135A political blind spot 137Reasserting the fundamental right to education 141

Appendix

Survey methodology 143Explanatory notes 146Sources 148Glossary 150Bibliographical note 151

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1.1. Introduction

As this report comes to completion,elementary education is close to beingrecognized as a fundamental right of allIndian citizens. This is the aim of theproposed 83rd constitutional amendment,which was introduced in the Rajya Sabhain July 1997.

The fact that this proposal has beengathering dust for so long speaksvolumes about the concern of politicalleaders for elementary education.Nevertheless, there is a good chance that

the 83rd amendment will be adopted inthe near future.

This amendment, however, is only thebeginning — not the end — of the struggleto universalize elementary education.Legislation alone cannot make up for halfa century of neglect. As this report bringsout, the schooling system is nowhere nearready to provide education of decentquality to every child. If the right toelementary education is to become areality, a massive effort is required to bringthe schooling system in line with this goal.And as things stand, there is little sign ofsuch an effort being undertaken. Quite

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A Fundamental Right

the contrary: as discussed in theconcluding chapter of this report, therhetoric of education as a fundamentalright is going hand in hand with anunprecedented retreat of state com-mitment to universal elementaryeducation.

This state of affairs is not just anindictment of the government. Of course,the government has a special resp-onsibility for translating the right toeducation into reality. But oppositionparties and social movements also bearresponsibility for failing to challenge thegovernment’s apathy, and to give forcefulexpression to popular aspirations foreducation. Further, the successfuluniversalization of elementary educationalso depends on the positive involvementof teachers, parents and other membersof the society. Whenever a teacherabsconds from the classroom, or a parentwithdraws a child from school on flimsygrounds, or an employer exploits a childlabourer, the fundamental right toeducation stands violated. Upholding thisright is, ultimately, a social responsibility— no one is exempted.

In this report, we try to present a balancedassessment of the state of India’sschooling system. We also discuss howthe current morass has come about, andtry to give an idea of what is to be done(without indulging in detailed prescription).

This is not an exhaustive enquiry — itgoes only as far as we have been able togo with the time and resources available.However, even this relatively brief surveyunearths plenty of problems, and manypossibilities for change. We hope that it

will stimulate further enquiry, debateand action.

1.2. Why PROBE?

Perhaps you, the reader, are alreadyyawning and wondering why on earthwe need another report on education.This is a fair question. If all the edu-cation reports that have been writtensince 1947 were to be gathered in oneanthology, the Mahabharata would lookquite concise in comparison. How isthis Public Report on Basic Education(PROBE) different?

The main answer is that this reportbuilds on extensive field work in ruralareas. Based on this field work, wehave attempted to present an authenticpicture of the schooling system as parents,children and teachers experience it. Inthat sense, this is not just a public reportbut also a ‘people’s report’. It is writtenfrom the standpoint of the underprivileged,especially the millions of children who areexcluded from the schooling system, andtheir parents. The report is based on thepremise that elementary education is afundamental right of every child.Guaranteeing this right is not just a matterof welfare or development, but one of basicsocial justice.

1.3. The PROBEsurvey

The cornerstone of this report is adetailed field survey (hereafter the PROBEsurvey) carried out from September to

December 1996. Thissurvey covered allschooling facilities, anda sample of 1376households, in 234r a n d o m l y - s e l e c t e dvillages of Bihar, MadhyaPradesh, Rajasthan,Uttar Pradesh andHimachal Pradesh. Asketch of the surveyappears at the end of thischapter. Further detailsare given in the App-endix, where you will

also find chapter-wise explanatory notespertaining to the survey data.

The five states covered by the surveyaccount for 40 per cent of India’s popu-lation, and more than half of all out-of-school children. This is not to say thatthey are ‘representative’ of the country asa whole. In fact, except for HimachalPradesh, these states are the worst-performing in terms of elementary edu-cation. The survey findings presented inthe report have to be read in that light.These findings, however, have muchrelevance for India as a whole, in so far asthe problems identified in the selectedstates often exist elsewhere to variousdegrees. In order to give the report an all-India focus, we have also drawn on otherfield-based studies. A selection of thesestudies is listed in the Bibliographical Note,along with other sources.

One of the striking findings emergingfrom the PROBE survey is the contrastbetween Himachal Pradesh and the otherfour states. In comparison with the otherstates, Himachal Pradesh has maderemarkable progress towards universalelementary education. Chapter 9 focuseson this little-known ‘success story’. Toavoid mixing apples and oranges, thesurvey data presented in other chaptersexclude Himachal Pradesh, and shouldbe understood to apply to the other fourstates (hereafter the ‘PROBE states’):

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1.1 83 ammendment

Rajasthan

UttarPradesh

Madhya Pradesh

Bihar

Himachal Pradesh

Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan andUttar Pradesh.

The term ‘elementary education’ usuallyrefers to the first eight years of schooling.In most states, including the PROBEstates, these are divided into two stages:‘primary’ (classes 1 to 5) and ‘upperprimary’ (classes 6 to 8). To keep thingsmanageable, we chose primary schoolingas the main focus of the PROBE survey.Unless stated otherwise, the survey datapresented in this report pertain to theprimary stage. However, our concern inthis report is with elementary educationas a whole.

All the stories and anecdotes appearingin this report are real. Most of them arebased on the PROBE survey, whichincludes a great deal of qualitativeinformation and first-hand observations.We have retained the original villagenames, but names of individuals have

sometimes been replaced by pseud-onyms, for the sake of privacy. Once in awhile, we have also made use of a pilotsurvey carried out in Delhi in 1995.

1.4. The case foruniversal elementaryeducation

Is it important to universalize elementaryeducation? In a sense, this question wassettled many years ago, and does notrequire further discussion. Indeed, Article45 of the Directive Principles of theConstitution urges all states to provide‘free and compulsory education for allchildren until they complete the age offourteen years’ — and that too by 1960!The current proposal to recognizeelementary education as a fundamentalright is just a stronger version of this earlierdirective.

‘The State shall endeavour to providewithin a period of ten years from the

commencement of this Constitution, forfree and compulsory education for allchildren until they complete the age of

fourteen years.’

(Constitution of India, DirectivePrinciples of State Policy, Article 45.)

Yet, the notion that it is not essential forall citizens to be educated remainswidespread. And this is one reason whypublic commitment to universalelementary education is so half-hearted.Even among teachers, we found personswho considered education as unimportantfor children of the ‘lower classes’ (seep.51). A common variant of this view isthat, as things stand, schooling is‘irrelevant’ for some children because thecurriculum and teaching methods are

The notion that elementary education is a fundamental right is

not accepted by all, at least not wholeheartedly. Some even

perceive the universalization of education as a threat to the

opportunities of their own children. In their view, the role of the

schooling system is to act as a ‘filtering process’, which picks

the best and the brightest and helps them to realize their

potential. If too many children get on board, the prospects of

those who currently enjoy the privilege of good schooling

facilities will be threatened.

Of course, these feelings are seldom expressed openly. Instead,

the tendency is to rationalize the inequities of the schooling

system in various ways. One common device is to blame the

victims. Poor parents, for instance, are held responsible for not

sending their children to school, overlooking all the difficulties

they face. Below are other real-life examples of statements of

this kind, heard in middle-class circles in the course of our

research:

‘So many schools, how can you talk of a shortage of schools?’

‘Lack of enterprise — so lazy, they do not make the best of the

opportunities offered.’

‘Why should government take the responsibility for educating

children?’

‘We have worked. We pay taxes. We should get something in

return.’

‘If a man can pay for his beedis, if a man can buy daru, then in

my opinion he should be able to pay for his child’s education.’

‘Waste of resources. They need literacy, that’s it, just enough

to catch a bus.’

‘The government has reduced funding for higher education to

promote primary education — yet it is a fact that many of

these people cannot learn.’

The perception of schooling as a filtering process has a strong

influence on educational planning. It helps to explain, for

instance, why enormous resources have been spent on

developing world-class institutions of higher learning (such as

the IIMs and IITs) while thousands of primary schools went

without blackboard or drinking water. Teaching methods and

the school curriculum also bear the stamp of this view of

education as a rat-race. We will return to that in chapter 6, when

we peep ‘inside the classroom’.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION: RIGHT OR PRIVILEGE?

A Fundamental Right

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inappropriate. Interestingly, we found littletrace of these rejectionist views amongordinary parents. It is usually in elite circlesthat concern to obtain the best possibleeducation for one’s own childrensomehow goes hand in hand with naggingdoubts about the value of education forothers.

Even those who are in favour of universalelementary education are not always fullyaware of how important this social goalreally is. For instance, government plannersand business groups often stress thateducation is important for economicgrowth. That is true enough, but theimportance of elementary education goesmuch beyond this concern for ‘humancapital’. Given the influence of thesereductionist views, it may be useful to statea fuller version of the case for universalelementary education. At least eightarguments can be invoked:

1. Fundamental right : As we saw,universal elementary education is aconstitutional directive. Further, otherconstitutional rights (such as the right topersonal liberty) may be considered toencompass the right to education. Thispoint, in fact, was made in February1993 by the Supreme Court. An explicitrecognition of the fundamental right toelementary education is embodied in theproposed 83rd constitutional amendment.The constitutional argument aloneclinches the case for considering universalelementary education as an essentialsocial goal.

2. Popular demand : Contrary to thecommon notion that poor parents are notinterested in education, the PROBE surveyindicates a massive popular demand forschooling (see chapter 2). The demandis not quite universal, but it is widespreadand rapidly growing. Failure to supportuniversal elementary education is a formof contempt for popular aspirations.

3. Human capital : The argument thateducation is important for economicsuccess receives strong support fromrecent research. This point has not beenlost on poor parents, who often have fewother prospects for economic advancementthan the education of their children. The

education of boys, inparticular, is driven firstand foremost by the hopeof better jobs and higherincomes. Some observ-ers deplore this ‘material-istic’ view of education,but there is no reason todismiss the concern ofpoor parents for greatereconomic security. Thecase for a broader view ofthe value of educationdoes not entail a denial ofthe economic benefits.

4. Joy of learning :Children who are taughtin a supportive environ-ment enjoy the schoolingexperience: the friends,the play, and the study. Inthe PROBE survey, wefound that when childrenwere asked why theywanted to continue study-ing, their answer usuallyreferred less to futurebenefits than to theimmediate pleasure oflearning — ‘bas, padhnaaccha lagta hai’ . The yearning for this joycomes across most clearly in those whoare deprived of it. For instance, youngdaughters condemned to domesticdrudgery after being withdrawn fromschool, often look back wistfully to theirschool days. Having said this, it is alsotrue that the school environment often failsto foster the joy of learning, and evenalienates many children. Thus, the rightto education has to be understood as aright to education of a certain quality. Whowould aspire to the right to get crushed,bored, humiliated or punished day afterday?

5. Individual well-being : The link betweeneducation and individual well-being goesmuch beyond economic returns or the joyof learning. For instance, there is plentyof evidence that education greatly helpsto achieve good health, and to protectchildren from disease. This is why infantmortality in Kerala, India’s most literatestate, is only 14 per thousand live births,compared with, say, 97 per thousand in

Madhya Pradesh. Another reason whyeducation enhances individual well-beingis that illiterate people tend to have lowself-esteem and a low social status. Thesame applies to out-of-school children,many of whom endure further depriv-ations such as the physical and psych-ological stress of child labour. Generally,education facilitates a whole range ofactivities that people tend to value: readingnewspapers, finding one’s way in a newcity, taking a bank loan, avoiding extortionor harassment, and participating in localpolitics, among many other examples.

6. Social progress : Education is of valuenot only for the person who acquires it,but also for others. For instance, when ayoung person from a deprived communityacquires good education, his or herabilities often help the whole community.Similarly, an educated mother is morelikely to send her own children to school,so that the benefits of education arecompounded across generations. Wide-spread education also helps to resolve

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A Fundamental Right

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social problems that call for open debateand public action. Dealing with issuessuch as communicable diseases, popu-lation growth or environmental degra-dation in an effective and democraticmanner depends on a wide exchange ofinformation and views among the public.

7. Political participation : Real democracyis a mirage as long as a large part of thepopulation remains excluded from thepolitical process. Common causes ofexclusion are economic insecurity, lack oforganization, and also widespreadilliteracy. While some kinds of politicalaction require little education, in generalliteracy and education are important toolsof effective political participation, whetherit takes the form of informed voting, orsigning a petition, or organizing a protest,or just contributing to public debates. Toillustrate, consider the ongoing debate oneconomic reforms. While this debateconcerns all citizens, it actually involvesonly a tiny fraction of the population. Asrecent surveys have shown, the vastmajority of Indians do not even know thateconomic reforms are taking place.People can hardly be expected to have aview on this matter, let alone take activesteps to oppose or support the reforms, ifthey have little awareness of what is goingon. Much the same can be said of recentdebates about, say, the uniform civil code,seed patents or nuclear weapons.

8. Social justice : Last but not least,universal elementary education is arequirement of social justice. India has along history of educational disparitiesbeing used to consolidate social in-equalities based on class, caste andgender. To some extent, this patterncontinues to apply today: privileged socialgroups have much better educationalopportunities, and this further consolidatestheir privileges. Further, the link betweeneducational disparities and socialinequality is gaining strength day by day,as literacy and education become moreimportant tools of self-defence. Thepowerlessness associated with beingilliterate in modern society comes throughloud and clear in the PROBE survey. AsShankar Lal of village Gadaula (Bandadistict, Uttar Pradesh) put it to us, ‘Anpadh

admi jivanbhar kasht mein rahta hai (anilliterate person’s life is full of troubles)’.

It is worth noting that most of thesearguments apply with special force tofemale education. For instance, one cru-cial link between widespread educationand social justice relates to gender equity.In so far as endemic illiteracy amongIndian women enhances their power-lessness in the family and the society,better schooling opportunities for girls arean essential step towards gender equality.The other arguments also point to theneed for a special emphasis on femaleeducation. This emphasis is to someextent inherent in a programme ofuniversal elementary education, given thata large majority of out-of-school childrenare girls. For the same reason, the readerwill not find a separate chapter on ‘femaleeducation’ in this report — the issue runsthrough the whole study.

At this point, the reader may feel thateducation is a panacea for all individualand social ills. That, of course, is not thecase. Universal elementary education, onits own, is no substitute for otherfundamental rights such as the right tofreedom from discrimination or exploit-ation. There is no need, however, to pitchone fundamental right against another.When it comes to elementary education,what is far more important is toacknowledge the complementarity bet-ween this particular right and a broadrange of other individual rights and socialgoals.

1.5. A counter-argument

We should now deal with an argumentthat has been quite influential in spreadingscepticism about the importance ofuniversal elementary education, not somuch in official quarters as in ‘radical’circles. The argument is that universalizingelementary education is pointless as longas the school pedagogy does not have amore liberating character. A strongerversion of this view is that schooling is aform of social control, aimed at depriving

children of their creative abilities andindependence of mind.

This argument merits serious consi-deration, notwithstanding the fact that itsproponents rarely fail to send their ownchildren to school. It is certainly true thatteaching methods in most schools areextremely stultifying, and that schooling isall but geared to personal developmentand critical enquiry. This limitation, how-ever, applies throughout the schoolingsystem: even in privileged urban schools,children are submitted to all kinds of mind-numbing exercises, from learning withoutcomprehension to wholesale memorizingand physical punishment. The pedagogi-cal critique, therefore, is not a case fortolerating the exclusion of underprivilegedchildren from the schooling system. It is,strictly speaking, a case for pedagogicalimprovement throughout the schoolingsystem, or for withdrawing all childrenfrom it.

This critique is also partly based on amisunderstanding of how the liberatinginfluence of education operates. Progressivepedagogy can certainly strengthen thisinfluence, but it is not its only source. Forinstance, learning to read and write cando a great deal to liberate children fromthe tremendous sense of powerlessnessexperienced by illiterate persons inmodern society, even when these skillsare acquired through fairly routinemethods. Similarly, children often benefitfrom associating with other children in alearning environment, even when thecontent of the learning activities them-selves is of limited interest. Some edu-cationists, in fact, take the view that thissocialization experience has much greatereducational value than the formalcurriculum.

In short, it is right to call for profoundchanges in teaching methods and theorientation of schooling, and also tointegrate this concern with the uni-versalization of elementary education(more on this in chapter 6). But this doesnot mean that universalization should waitfor sweeping changes in schoolpedagogy. Such a position may soundradical, but it is really a recipe for inaction.

A Fundamental Right

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1.6. Literacy,schooling andeducation

In a letter to the International League forthe Rational Education of Children, dated14 August 1908, Rabindranath Tagorespoke eloquently about the meaning ofeducation. In a nutshell, he argued forviewing education as ‘a right whichenables individuals and communities toact on reflection’. Many other definitionsare possible, and compatible with thisreport. One reason for highlighting thisone is that, in spirit with this report, it drawsattention to (a) education as a fundamentalright, (b) the social dimension of education,(c) the importance of critical enquiry, and(d) the link between education and action.

Schooling is not the only means ofacquiring education, but the two areclosely linked. In particular, the right toeducation is usually understood in termsof a certain number of years of schooling(e.g. eight years according to the standardunderstanding of Article 45). We shallfollow this convention, but the readershould not lose sight of the fact thateducation is more than schooling, andalso that a lot of schooling activity has littleto do with education as Tagore defines it.Tagore’s stress on ‘reflection’, for in-stance, is absent from the standard schoolcurriculum. Instead, the stress tends to beon acquiring specific mental skills thathappen to be valued in the moderneconomy and society.

One of these skills is literacy. Ineconomic research, the terms ‘education’and ‘literacy’ have tended to be usedsomewhat interchangeably, partly be-cause literacy rates are convenientstatistical indicators of educational levels.Literacy is indeed an educationalachievement of immense importance,and, as will be seen in the next chapter,there is much to learn from comparisonsof literacy rates in different regions orperiods. But this does not justifyconfusing literacy and education, orrestricting the focus of education policy to

‘total literacy’. Education for all is a muchbroader — as well as more demanding— social goal.

1.7. Outline of thereport

In this chapter, we have tried to build theconceptual scaffolding of the PROBEreport. With this background, we now enterthe real world of schooling. We begin, inthe next chapter, with a brief overview of‘facts and myths’ about the educationalsituation in India. If you are alreadyknowledgeable on this subject, the ‘facts’will sound familiar, but the ‘myths’ maystill interest you.

In chapter 3, we take leave fromsecondary data and try to put ourselves inthe chappals of ordinary parents andchildren. Based on the PROBE survey,we attempt to convey their perceptions ofthe schooling system, and the problemsthey face in acquiring education. Onereason why their struggle is so unre-warding is the low quality of schooling,and this leads us, in chapter 4, to take acritical look at the school environment. Wefocus in particular on four distinct areas ofconcern: the physical infrastructure,teacher resources, classroom activitypatterns, and social discrimination atschool.

Chapter 5 lends its ear to the teachers —the key actors in the village school. After abrief discussion of their background andoutlook, we identify two major reasonswhy their skills are vastly under-utilized: ademotivating work environment, and lackof accountability. Following on this, weturn to relations between teachers and thevillage community, and the role of teacher-parent cooperation in creating a moresupportive and accountable school en-vironment. In chapter 6, we follow teachersand pupils inside the classroom. Themain focus of this chapter is on basicpedagogical issues. We discuss, inparticular, how children are burdened withan overloaded curriculum, unfriendly

textbooks, oppressive teaching methods,and exacting examinations.

In chapter 7, we take a step back andconsider some general issues of edu-cation management. Since the PROBEsurvey did not cover the higher layers ofthe school management structure, thediscussion here is far from exhaustive.Instead, we present a few ‘case studies’of management issues as seen from thegrass-roots. The topics selected includeOperation Blackboard, pupil-incentiveschemes, the inspection system, andschool records. In the same spirit,chapter 8 examines some recentdevelopments in the field of elementaryeducation. These include school-mealprogrammes, ‘alternative schooling’, therapid expansion of private schools, vari-ous NGO initiatives, and some examplesof spontaneous popular action.

The silver lining of this report is tuckedaway in chapter 9, where we take a holidayfrom the PROBE states to watch theschooling revolution in HimachalPradesh. The term ‘revolution’ is a trifleromantic, but it is hard to find a better termto describe Himachal Pradesh’saccelerated transition towards universalelementary education. Chapter 9 attemptsto present a fair picture of this transition. Italso discusses the foundations of thissuccess, focusing especially on thevirtuous circle of state initiative and publicresponse, as well as on the social condi-tions that have strengthened this processin Himachal Pradesh.

Finally, chapter 10 returns to the biggerissues in the light of the report’s findings.It is especially concerned with the politicsof elementary education. We argue thatthe schooling transition achieved inHimachal Pradesh can be realized on abroader basis, but also that there aredisquieting signs of official abdication onthis front. There is, thus, an urgent needto build the political momentum requiredto make the fundamental right to edu-cation a reality. This is a real challengefor all those who stand in solidarity withthe underprivileged sections of Indiansociety.

A Fundamental Right

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CLARIFICATIONS

This page displays the skeleton of the PROBE survey. Some

clarifications follow. If you don’t like statistics, you can skip

this page without fear of being lost later on. If you like them,

you can find further fodder in the Appendix.

1. The main focus of the PROBE survey is primary schooling.

Accordingly, we collected detailed information on all schools

with a primary section (i.e. classes 1-5) in the sample villages

— hereafter the ‘sample schools’. The term ‘primary schools’

refers to schools with a primary section only. Most sample

schools are primary schools. The term ‘primary sections’

refers to all primary sections in the sample schools.

2. While sample schools include both government and private

schools, the main focus of the report is on government

schools. These make up four-fifths of all sample schools.

Private schools are dealt with in chapter 8 (section 8.4).

Unless stated otherwise, the school data presented elsewhere

in the report should be understood to apply to government

schools only.

3. Sample households consist of a random sample of

households residing in the sample villages and with at least

one child in the 6-12 age group.

4. As the above figures show, about 70 per cent of all children

aged 6-14 in the sample households are currently enrolled in a

school. This is an encouraging trend, considering that out-of-

school children made up about three-fifths of the 5-14 age

group in the PROBE states as recently as 1986-7 (Visaria et al.,

1993). However, this trend has to be read in light of the fact

that (1) ‘nominal enrolment’ is a common and possibly growing

practice (see chapter 8 and Survey Methodology), and (2) even

among genuinely-enrolled children, attendance rates are often

low.

A Fundamental Right

7

Number of sample villages: 188 48

Number of sample households: 1,221 154

Number of children aged 6-14in the sample households: female* male female male

enrolled in a school 766 1,331 157 159not enrolled 596 227 9 4total 1,362 1,558 166 163

Number of sample schools: government private government privateprimary 162 25 45 4middle with primary section 32 12 1 2secondary with primary section 1 4 2 0total 195 41 48 6

Number of teachers in female male female maleprimary sections:

government schools 137 513 68 99private schools 24 162 22 3total 161 675 90 102

* Adjusted for under-counting of girls (see Survey Methodology, p. 143).

HImachal PradeshPROBE States(Bihar, Madhya Pradesh,

Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh)

THE PROBE SURVEY

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2

ELEMENTARYEDUCATION IN

INDIA: SOME FACTSAND MYTHS

This chapteris divided into twoparts. Section 2.1presents a briefpicture of theeducationalsituation in India. This situation islooked at fromvarious angles: theprogress made sinceindependence,India's positionvis-a-vis othercountries, thecomparativeachievements ofdifferent socialgroups, and so on. No matter how onelooks at it, thestate of elementaryeducation in Indiais dismal. Section2.2 discusses fourcommon myths aboutthe roots of thisproblem. In laterchapters, we will

reexamine thecauses ofeducationaldeprivation, basedon the PROBEsurvey.

2.1. Some Facts

Fact 1: Lowachievements

The fact thatelementaryeducation in Indiaremains far fromuniversal is nosecret. Yet, theenormity of theproblem is oftenunderestimated. Insome circles,India's successwith highereducation (whichhas produced agalaxy of eminentscientists,lawyers, doctorsand writers) haseven created theimpression that weare doing justfine.

Contrary tothis illusion of

success, hundredsof millions ofIndians continue tobe deprived of theopportunity tolearn. Forinstance, at thetime of the 1991census and theNational FamilyHealth Survey(1992-3):

- Half of thecountry'spopulation(61% of womenand 36% ofmen, aged 7and above) wasunable to readand write.

- Only 30 percent of alladults hadcompletedeight years ofschooling.

- One third ofall childrenaged 6-14years (about23 millionboys and 36million girls)

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were out ofschool.

[Chart 2.1:

Educational levels]

Internationalcomparisons giveanother useful viewof this bleakpicture. In India,the average adulthas spent a littleover two years at

school, comparedwith five years in

China, seven years

in Sri Lanka andover nine years in

South Korea. Indiaappears in a poorlight even comparedwith regions thatare oftenconsidered here as"backward": forinstance, femaleliteracy rates aremuch lower in Indiathan in sub-SaharanAfrica.

[Chart 2.2: Mean

years of schooling]

Fact 2: Highdisparities

Aside frombeing low onaverage,educationalachievements inIndia are highlyuneven. Literacy,for instance, isalmost universal inurban Kerala, butpractically unknownamong scheduled-caste women inRajasthan.

[Map: District-wise

literacy rates, age10-14]

Generally,literacy rates varya great deal byregion, class,caste and gender. The regionalcontrasts areillustrated in theattached map. Asthis map shows,literacy rates tendto be higher insouth and westernIndia than in northor eastern India. The most advancedstate is Kerala,

where illiteracyhas been virtuallyeliminated. ThePROBE states(Bihar, MadhyaPradesh, Rajasthanand Uttar Pradesh)are the worstperformers. It isshocking to find,for instance, thatin as many as 72

districts of thesefour states amajority ofchildren in the 10-14 age group areilliterate.

Within a givenregion, literacyrates tend to belower among thosewho areeconomicallyunderprivileged. Literacy rates alsotend to berelatively lowamong scheduledcastes, scheduledtribes and Muslims. Even at a givenlevel of income,children from thesedisadvantagedcommunities are

3

much less likely togo to school thanother children.

[Chart 2.3:

Literacy rates,1991, by socialgroup]

Anothercrucial pattern isthat literacy ratesare much lower forwomen than for menin most regions. In fact, India hasone of the highestfemale-male gaps inliteracy rates inthe world. According to HumanDevelopment Report1997, only fivecountries have ahigher gap thanIndia: Libya,Syria, Togo, Malawiand Mozambique. Rajasthan alone hasas large apopulation as allthese countriescombined, and nocountry in theworld has a higherfemale-maleliteracy gap than

Rajasthan. Theother PROBE statesonly faremarginally betterthan Rajasthan.

[Factsheet: Female

education]

Fact 3: Slowprogress

Some readersmay be hoping totake comfort in thefact that the stateof elementaryeducation in Indiais rapidlyimproving. Thesituation is indeedimproving over time(as in most othercountries). Thepace ofimprovement,however, is veryslow. Forinstance, theincrease ofliteracy rates isso slow that theabsolute number ofilliterate personsis still risingyear after year:the number of

illiterate personsaged 7 and above

rose from 302

million in 1981 to324 million in

1991.

[Chart 2.4: Number

of illiterates,1941-91]

During thelast fifty years,many countries haveovertaken India inthe field ofelementaryeducation. Animportant exampleis China. In thelate 1940s, bothcountries had verysimilar problems ofmass illiteracy andendemic poverty. Today, India is waybehind China as faras elementaryeducation isconcerned. Theproportion ofilliterate personsin the 15-19 agegroup, forinstance, is morethan six times ashigh in India (32

4

per cent) as inChina (5 per cent). If present trendscontinue, it maytake another fiftyyears before Indiaachieves theconstitutional goalof universaleducation until theage of 14.

[Chart 2.5: India

and China]

Fact 4: Stateinertia

India's dismalperformance in thefield of elementaryeducation islargely areflection of stateinertia. Thistakes the form, forinstance, of under-provision ofeducationfacilities,inadequatesupervision of theschooling system,and blatant neglectof disadvantagedregions andcommunities. Many

other examples willcome up later inthis report. Inrecent years,attempts of varyingsignificance havebeen made toresolve theinadequacies of theschooling system,notably bylaunching various"schemes" such asnon-formaleducation, theBihar EducationProject, and theTotal LiteracyCampaign. Most ofthese schemes,however, are of asupplementary andad hoc nature, andas far as the basicschoolinginfrastructure isconcerned, there isno sign of majorimprovement. Noris there anyindication ofelementaryindication becominga major politicalconcern.

[Box: Kerala]

In India,elementaryeducation is asharedresponsibility ofstate and centralgovernments (i.e.it appears on the"concurrent list"). In practice, stategovernments are themain actors. Thisis one reason whythe reach andquality of theschooling systemvaries a great dealfrom state tostate. A fewstates havesucceeded inovercoming thesyndrome ofofficial neglect,with impressiveresults. The bestexample is Kerala,with its longhistory of publicinvolvement in thepromotion ofeducation. Therehave also beenmajor initiativesin Tamil Nadu andHimachal Pradesh,

5

which areprogressing quiterapidly towardsuniversalelementary literacyin the younger agegroups (see chapter9). On the otherside, officialapathy is veryresilient in thePROBE states. Somesymptoms of thisproblem are: (1)declining teacher-pupil ratios, (2)frequent under-utilization ofcentral governmentgrants ear-markedfor education, (3)chaoticimplementation ofcentrally-sponsored

schemes such asOperationBlackboard and theTotal LiteracyCampaign, (4)increasing relianceon second-trackeducationfacilities such as"non-formaleducation centres",even when those areknown to

ineffective andunsustainable. Insome states, thedistortion ofpriorities hasreached unusualproportions. InUttar Pradesh, forinstance, the rightto elementaryeducation hasreceived lessattention than,say, the right tocheat inexaminations (seep. ##). And Biharboosts the largestnumber ofuniversityprofessors in thecountry, despite achronic shortage ofschool teachers. The issue of stateinertia will bereconsidered in theconcluding chapter,where we brieflydiscuss thepolitics ofelementaryeducation in India.

2.2. Some Myths

The reasonswhy so manychildren are out ofschool, as theyemerge from thePROBE survey, willbe examined in thenext chapter. Meanwhile, it maybe helpful todebunk a few mythsthat have cloudedclear thinking onthis subject. Eachof these mythscontains a grain oftruth, but thisgrain of truth hasoften been bloatedout of proportionin public debates,leading to muchconfusion.

Myth 1: Parents arenot interested

One commonmyth is that mostIndian parents havelittle interest intheir children'seducation. Thismyth of parentalindifferenceremainsastonishingly

6

widespread(especially inofficial circles,where it provides aconvenientrationalization forIndia's lowschooling levels). To illustrate, inits golden-jubileeanalysis of India'sfailure to achieveuniversalelementaryeducation, Times ofIndia (15th August

1997, p.37)confidently asserts-- without evidence-- that "illiterateand semi-literateparents see noreason to sendtheir children toschool". On thesame day, a similararticle in IndianExpress (written bya leading expert onthe sociology ofeducation) states:"Although there isgeneral awarenessthat literacy is abasic need andright of everyperson, it is not

perceived as suchby everyindividual. Thevast majority ofadult illiteratesbelonging to thepoor economicstratum are notconvinced of it."

In contrast tothis supposedindifference, wefind that even inthe PROBE states(where parentalapathy is likely tobe most widespread)most parents attachimportance to theirchildren'seducation. Forinstance, inresponse to thequestion "is itimportant for a boyto be educated?",the proportion ofparents who answer"yes" is as high as98 per cent. This

is not to deny thatparentalindifference doesexist in specificcases -- this isthe "grain of

truth" in the mythof parentalindifference. Parental motivationfor the educationof girls, inparticular, islacking in asignificantproportion offamilies. But thegeneral pattern isnot one of parentalindifference. Onthe contrary, the"typical" fatherand mother are verykeen that theirchildren shouldreceive a goodeducation. It isanother matter thatthey do not alwayshave much faith inthe schoolingsystem's ability toimpart sucheducation -- weshall return tothis problem.

[Table 2.1:Parental attitudes

to education]

Myth 2: Child

7

labour is the mainobstacle

Another mythis that most out-of-school childrenare unable to studybecause they haveto work. Thiswidespread beliefhas been fuelled byshocking cases offull-time childlabour in specificareas andoccupations, suchas carpet-weavingin Mirzapur ormatch-making inSivakasi. Someorganisations claimthat 65 millionchildren in Indiaare "forced to workfor more than eighthours a day"(Bandhua MuktiMorcha), or eventhat India has 70to 80 million childlabourers, working12 hours a day onaverage (CoalitionAgainst ChildLabour). Followingon that, thequestion is often

asked: "How can wemake our countryfully literate when60 million of ourchildren areengaged in full-time jobs as childlabourers?"(National Herald, 2January 1997).

[Table 2.2: Labour

force participationof children]

The plight offull-time childlabour is indeeddistressing, andthe abovestatements may havesome shock value inhelping to drawattention to thisissue. However, asa factualdescription of theproblem of childlabour and itsrelation toschooling, thesestatements aremisleading in threerespects. First,they vastlyexaggerate themagnitude of the

problem. Availabledata on labourforce participation(from the census,the National SampleSurvey, the PROBEsurvey, and relatedsources) clearlyindicate that onlya small minority ofIndian children arefull-timelabourers. Second,these statementsmisrepresent thenature of the workperformed by childlabourers. Thevast majority ofchild labourerswork as familylabourers at homeor in the fields,not as wagelabourers (seeTable 2.3). Thisdistinction has abearing on therelation betweenchild labour andschooling; forinstance, the scopefor adjustment inworking hours isusually greater infamily labour thanin hired labour.

8

Third, the abovestatements involvea simplisticreading of thecauses of childlabour andeducationaldeprivation. Specifically, theysuggest that full-time childlabourers areunable to go toschool because theyhave to work,rather than thereverse (i.e. thatchildren workbecause they havedropped out ofschool). Inpractice, bothpatterns arepossible.

[Table 2.3:Economic activitiesof out-of-school

children]

Here again,the myth inquestion containsan element oftruth, which mustnot be overlooked. The phenomenon of

full-time childlabour, thoughconfined, is adisgrace. Even forpart-time childworkers engaged infamily labour, workis not alwayscompatible withschooling. Attimes of peakagriculturalactivity, forinstance, poorfamilies may beunder greatpressure tomobilise childrenas full-timelabourers. Andthat may be enoughto exclude themfrom the schoolingsystem altogether. Thesequalificationsbecome more andmore serious as thefocus moves toprogressively olderage groups. Thetime utilization ofchildren will bediscussed in moredetail in the nextchapter.

[Box: Child labour

in Ferozebad]

Myth 3: Elementaryeducation is free

Another mythis that elementaryeducation in Indiais free, asdirected by theConstitution. Itmay well be free,or nearly free, inthe restrictedsense thatadmission fees ingovernment schoolsare negligible. But that does notmean that educationis free in the morerelevant sense thatit involves noexpenditure for theparents. Recentsurveys indicatethat the cash costsof education play amajor role indiscouraging poorfamilies fromsending children toschool, especiallywhen the quality ofschooling is low.

9

The PROBEsurvey suggeststhat north Indianparents spend aboutRs 318 per year (on

fees, books,slates, clothes,etc.), on average,to send a child toa governmentprimary school.This is a majorfinancial burden,especially for poorfamilies withseveral children ofschool-going age. Thus, anagriculturallabourer in Biharwith three suchchildren would haveto work for about45 days in the year

just to send themto primary school. Note also that,even at Rs 318 per

year, the averagechild goes toschool with scantyclothes and adepleted schoolbag. Only a minority ofchildren, forinstance, werefound to be in

possession of allthe textbookscorresponding totheir grade. Theaverage expenditureof Rs 318 per year

is well below realneeds.

[Table 2.4: Costs

of education]

Myth 4: Schools areavailable

Much progresshas been made,since independence,in the provision ofschoolingfacilities. Forinstance, thenumber of primaryschools has nearlytripled. In 1993,94 per cent of therural populationlived within onekilometre of aprimary school. Clearly, physicaldistance betweenhome and school ismuch less of aproblem than itused to be. Somego so far as to

conclude that theproblem has by andlarge been solved. According to theDepartment ofEducation's latest(1997-8) annualreport, forinstance,"accessibility ofschoolingfacilities is nolonger a majorproblem" (p.30).This is anothermyth, for severalreasons.

First, whatneeds to beconsidered is notjust physicaldistance but also"social distance",taking into accountvarious barriersthat may prevent awilling child toreach the localschool. In manyareas, forinstance, villagesare divided intoseparate hamlets,and children fromone hamlet may bereluctant or unable

10

to go to school inanother hamlet,e.g. due to castetensions. Onlyhalf of all hamletsin rural India havea primary school,and in states likeUttar Pradesh, theproportion of suchhamlets is as lowas 30 per cent. For girls,restricted freedomof movement furtherenhances theproblem of socialdistance.

Second, inassessing thephysical adequacyof schoolingfacilities, it iscrucial not toloose sight of theconstitutionalobjective ofuniversal educationuntil the age of14. This calls forthe convenientavailability notonly of primaryschools, but alsoof "middle"(sometimes called

upper-primary)schools withclasses up to gradeeight. Once theattention shifts tomiddle schools, theinadequacy of theschoolinginfrastructurereemerges as amajor problem. Only 29 per cent ofthe PROBE surveyvillages, forinstance, have amiddle school. Andin rural India as awhole, 43 per centof the populationlives more than 1kilometre away fromthe nearest upper-primary school. Here again, girlsare the mainvictims, becausemany parents arereluctant to allowtheir daughters toattend school inother villages.

Third, eventhe basic problemof physicaldistance fromprimary schools

persists for asignificant

minority of

families. The mostobvious aspect ofthis problem is theabsence of anyschool in somevillages. Inaddition, adverseterrain issometimes a majorobstacle(especially forsmall children)even when a schoolis available withinthe village. Inthe Himalayanregion, forinstance, primary-school childrenoften have to walklong distancesuphill, or throughforests and acrossstreams, to reachthe village school. These hurdles areno joke,particularly in thewinter. Ifschooling is aninalienable rightof all citizens,these outstandingproblems of

11

physical distancehave to beresolved.

[Table 2.5: School

availability]

It should alsobe borne in mindthat even whenschool facilitiesare available at aconvenientdistance, they areoften inadequate,in terms of bothquality andquantity. It islittle use livingwithin onekilometre of aprimary school ifthe school isalreadyovercrowded, or ifit has a singleteacher, or if theschool is deprivedof basic facilitiessuch as ablackboard. As weshall see, thesecircumstances arefar from unusual.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

Anwar Hussain of village Jotri Peepal(Bharatpur, Rajasthan) has dropped outof school, much to the disappointment ofhis parents. Though they are both ill-iterate, the family has land and livestock.The parents were looking forward toAnwar doing the hisab-kitab for them.Anwar used to go to school, but he couldnot understand what the teacher said, andthe teacher beat him often. Studies wereboring and difficult. After class 4, Anwarrefused to go back to school, no matterhow hard his parents coaxed him to doso. Now he grazes cattle for four hours a

day, and spends the rest of his timeplaying.

Anwar’s story is one among dozens ofstories we have heard from drop-outchildren and their parents. It is not‘representative’ by any means. Indeed,as we shall see, there are many differentways in which a child can find himself orherself excluded from the schoolingsystem. Anwar’s story, however, high-lights one point that emerges again andagain from these testimonies: that in ruralIndia, sending a child to school on a

SO

ND

EE

P S

HA

NK

AR

Schooling and the Family

regular basis requires a great deal of efforton the part of the child and his or herparents.

E ffort may be required for variousreasons: the costs may seem prohibitive;time may be lacking to prepare the childfor school in the morning; he or she maybe needed at home or in the fields; thechild may be deterred by a hostileenvironment at school, or by physicalpunishment; no-one may be available tohelp him or her with homework; lack ofprogress at school may sap the morale ofparents and children, and so on. In thelight of these obstacles, it is easier tounderstand why so many children are outof school even when their parents express

a strong interest in education. This con-trast between aspirations and achieve-ments is one of the main concerns of thischapter.

3.1. Parental Viewson Education

Overall motivation

We have already noted in chapter 2 thatthe general level of interest in educationamong Indian parents is quite high, evenin the lagging states covered by thePROBE survey. Many parents, in fact,clearly said that education was indis-pensable in modern society. Examplesof statements to that effect are: ‘jo nahinpadhega vo har ek tarike se nuksan meinrahega (an uneducated person will alwaysbe in trouble)’, ‘ghar mein padha-likhavyakti hai to koi chinta nahin rahti hai (ifthere is an educated person in the house,there is no need to worry about anything)’,‘anpadh aadmi asani se thaga jata hai (anuneducated man is easily cheated)’.Several respondents went so far as to saythat ‘an uneducated person is like ananimal (bina padha aadmi janwar samanhai)’.

One indication of the rising tide ofeducational aspirations is that the pro-portion of children who have never beenenrolled in a school (‘never-enrolled’

children) is declining quite rapidly. Tenyears ago, according to the NationalSample Survey, these children accountedfor about half of all rural children aged 6-14 in the PROBE states. For 1996, thisproportion is estimated from PROBEsurvey data to have declined to around 20per cent (Chart 3.2). In other words, todaymost parents give schooling a chance.

High motivation despite adversecircumstances

Ram Rati is a fourteen-year old tribalgirl who lives in Balner (Betul, M.P.).

Her parents, who subsist on agricultureand wage labour, are poor and

illiterate. Yet, Ram Rati walks six kmsevery day to the middle school in

Vijaygram, where she studies in class 7.

Many other signs of high and rapidly-growing parental interest in educationcame to our attention in the course of thisstudy. Here are some examples: (1) mostparents support compulsory education forall children (see p. 14); (2) private schoolsare springing up in many villages, andeven poor parents often enrol theirchildren in a private school if the localgovernment school is not working (seechapter 8), (3) when the government of

19

AN

AL S

HA

H

Madhya Pradesh announced that it wouldcreate an education centre on request inany hamlet where schooling facilities arenot available, more than 15,000 requestswere received within a year mainly fromtribal areas.

The gender bias

While the gap in educational aspirationsbetween different social groups isnarrowing rapidly, these common aspi-rations give very unequal attention to boysand girls. Most parents (mothers no less

than fathers) expressed much strongerinterest in their sons’ education than intheir daughters’. To illustrate, the pro-portion of parents who stated thateducation is not important for girls is ashigh as 10 per cent — compared with only1 per cent in the case of boys (p. 14). Simi-larly, responses to the question ‘How farwould you like your son/daughter tostudy?’ clearly reveal that parents havemuch higher expectations for their sonsthan for their daughters (Chart 3.4). Manyother indications of the gender bias werefound in the survey, both from the quanti-tative and the qualitative data.

The gender bias is so strong that itmakes little sense to lump boys and girlstogether when discussing the motivationof parents for education. From their pointof view, male and female education arevery different matters. The relevant motivesin each case are discussed below.

Motivation for sons’education

Why are parents so interested in theeducation of boys? The overwhelmingreason is economic: parents are hopingthat their sons, if educated, will have betteremployment opportunities (see Chart 3.1).

As a dalit father from village Madarpur(Moradabad district), put it: ‘Padha likhahoga to naukri karega, bijnus karega,dukan ka karya bhi acchha karega. Usesaphalta milegi. (An educated boy canget a job, can do business, can run a shopproperly. He will be successful.)’

This predominance of the ‘employmentmotive’ has been noticed in a number ofearlier studies. Some may consider it asa narrow and materialistic motive, anddeplore the fact that social pressures aresuch that so many parents think ofeducation chiefly in terms of its economicvalue. This misgiving is understandable,and it is right to stress the non-economicvalue of education. At the same time, thereare no grounds for berating the economicaspect. Poor parents have good reasonto yearn for better employment oppor-tunities, and to think that education mayhelp in that respect.

Further, it would be a mistake to think thatparents care only for the economicbenefits of education. On further probing,they do perceive a number of non-economic benefits as well. Chief amongthose is the role of education in improvingone’s self-esteem and social status(Chart 3.1). Hoshiyar ban jayega (be-coming smarter)’, ‘samajhdar ho jayega(better understanding)’ and ‘doosron sebaat karne mein kathinai nahin hogi(confidence in talking to others)’ weresome common expressions used toconvey this sentiment. Related to this isthe feeling that education helps to defend


20

one’s rights. For instance, educationhelps ‘not to be scared of officers’, ‘to getinformation about what benefits areavailable’, and ‘to fill forms’. Other benefitsof education mentioned by PROBErespondents included ‘apna bhala burasamjhega (will understand what’s goodfor them)’, ‘kheti achha karega (adoptbetter farming practices)’, ‘kahin bhighoom-phir sakta hai (can go where helikes)’, and ‘davai pahchan sakta hai(distinguish between medicines)’. Takentogether, these responses add up to afairly perceptive understanding of theindividual and social benefits of education,at least as far as male education isconcerned.

‘Sabhi bachhe padhenge tounko apna adhikar milega.(If all children study, they

will get their rights.)’

A young man from Sotawa(Morena, M.P.).

‘Samaj mein padhe-likhe logonko hi ijjat mil paati hai.

(Society only respects thosewho are educated.)’

An OBC labourer in Jaitro Banjari(Palamau, Bihar).

ECONOMIC RETURNS TO ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

In mainstream economics, education is treated as an ‘investment’. Internationalstudies of economic returns to education suggest that (1) education is one of thebest investments developing countries can make, (2) economic returns toeducation are highest for primary schooling and decline with rising levels ofeducation, and (3) female education has higher economic returns than maleeducation.

Studies focusing on India lead to similar results. For instance, a study on AndhraPradesh found that the earnings of adults with primary education are twice as highas those of illiterate persons. Compared with mere literacy, primary educationenhances individual earnings by 20 per cent. A recent analysis of NationalSample Survey data for Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu finds that each year ofextra schooling raises men’s productivity by 8 per cent and women’s productivityby 10 per cent. Another study, which focuses on inter-state comparisons ofproductivity and growth, suggests that an increase of one year in the averageeducational attainment of the workforce raises output by 13 per cent. As in othercountries, economic returns to education in India are estimated to be higher thanthe returns to other investments, highest at the primary level, and higher forfemale than for male education. The direct economic returns to the society frominvestment in primary education in India have been estimated to be above 20 percent.

Had India striven to improve the quality of education, the returns would havebeen even higher. The poor quality of education has indeed restricted thequantum of returns.

Based on contributions from J.B.G. Tilak and Jeemol Unni.

Motivation fordaughters’ education

In understanding parental attitudes tofemale education, the first thing to note isthat north Indian parents tend to think of adaughter’s upbringing mainly from the

point of view of her marriage. At the timeof marriage, a north Indian daughtertypically leaves her family and joins herhusband’s family in his village. From thenon, her relationship with her parents isquite distant — hence the view of marriageas the ultimate goal of a daughter’supbringing. In the case of sons, the situ-ation is very different, since male childrenremain close to their parents aftermarriage and often look after them in oldage. Another crucial contrast is that theemployment opportunities of adult womenare much more limited than those of adultmen. These social norms, of course, arechanging over time (especially in urbanareas), but they still have a strong holdtoday.

One consequence of this outlook is thatsome parents are quite indifferent to adaughter’s education. From their ownpoint of view, it doesn’t really make muchdifference, since she is going to leave themanyway. Further, the employment motivefor investing in education, so powerful inthe case of boys, is much weaker for girls.This sentiment of indifference transpires


21

in many of the comments made by parentswho stated that it is ‘not important’ for agirl to be educated. Examples of suchcomments are: ‘We marry daughters at ayoung age anyway’, ‘What’s the use? Sheis not going to go out and work’, ‘We don’teducate girls in our community’, and ‘Sheshould learn to do what she will have todo when she grows up: keep house’.

‘Padh-likhkar ladki kya karegi?Usko ghar ka kaam karna hai.

What’s the point of a girl studying?She has to do housework.’

An OBC labourer from Doodapura,(Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan).

‘Hamein apni ladki ko padhanahi nahin hai.

On no account will weeducate our daughter.’

Another resistant Rajasthani male.

The crucial role of marriage consi-derations also appears in the positivereasons that were given by other parentsfor wanting to educate daughters (Chart3.1). Interestingly, the most frequently citedreason was that an educated daughterwould be able to write letters and keepaccounts. Foremost in many respon-dent’s minds, especially among women,was the thought that a married daughtershould be able to get in touch with herparents in times of crisis, or to maintainsome kind of contact even otherwise.Other common motives for femaleeducation, again linked with marriage, arethat it improves the prospects of a goodmatch, helps a daughter to raise her ownchildren, and makes it easier to cope withwidowhood or divorce. Some parentswent beyond these marriage-relatedconsiderations, and did mention otheraspects such as better employmentopportunities. The latter were mentionedby 40 per cent of the respondents, a muchlower figure than the corresponding figurefor sons (87 per cent), but neverthelessan interesting indication that women’semployment opportunities are increas-ingly viewed in a positive light.

‘Ladki ko padhane ke liye hamare paaspaise nahin hai. Aur gaon mein shadi

kam umar mein hi ho jati hai.(We don’t have the money to educate

girls. And in the village, girls aremarried off at a very young age.)’

A dalit woman from Doodapura (SawaiMadhopur, Rajasthan).

Even among those who positively wanttheir daughters to be educated, thedesired level of education is quite low. AsChart 3.4 indicates, an overwhelmingmajority of parents want their sons to studybeyond (often well beyond) class 8, butmany parents have no such expectationsfor their daughters. A substantial minoritydoes not even expect a daughter to studybeyond the primary level. One specificreason for this (aside from the generalproblem of lack of parental ambition forfemale education) is that parents are oftenreluctant to let their daughters studyoutside the village. This underlines thecontinuing problem of inadequate supplyof upper-primary schools, discussed inchapter 2. Another specific reason is that,in some circumstances, a well-educateddaughter is harder to marry.

‘...education is so important for girls.Marriage becomes easier, teaching their

children becomes easier, facingwidowhood or divorce becomes easier.’

An illiterate dalit labourer inMujahidpur (Muzaffarnagar, U.P.).

‘It is important to educate boys, but it iseven more important to educate girls,

because they have to manage the entirehousehold. Also, everyone nowadays

wants an educated bride.’

An Ahir farmer from Baridih(Ranchi, Bihar).

Going back to the common problem ofparental indifference to female education,the great danger of this attitude is that itleads many parents to give up as soon asthe expenditure or effort involved insending a daughter to school rises abovea low threshold. It is not so much that theyhave any principled opposition to femaleeducation, but rather that they are unwillingto invest much in it. As one father fromSingapatti (Mathura, U.P.) bluntly put it,‘Education means spending money and Ican’t afford to spend so much on girls.’

Parents desire

much higher

education

levels for sons

than for

daughters.


22

AS

HO

K G

RO

VE

R

Education, marriage andcaste

Asked whether educating a daughtermade it easier or more difficult to get hermarried, 73 per cent of the respondentssaid ‘easier’ and 27 per cent said ‘moredifficult’. To reconcile these responses,we have to distinguish between marriageprospects and marriage costs. Educationmay give a bride better prospects offinding a ‘good’ husband, and at thesame time raise the cost of her marriagebecause social norms require her to marrya better-educated husband. How parentshandle this dilemma is likely to dependboth on their financial means and on theirconcern for their daughter’s future well-being.

Much would also depend on theresponsiveness of marriage prospectsand marriage costs, respectively, to adaughter’s education. If parents expectmarriage costs to rise sharply with hereducation, they may be that much lessinclined to send her to school. In this res-pect, one important factor is the generallevel of education (especially male edu-cation) in their caste or community. In,say, a community with high levels of maleeducation, educating a daughter up to theprimary or even upper-primary level may

studied)?’; ‘Ladki acchi hone se ladkasamajhdar mil jata hai (it is easier to finda sensible boy if the girl is educated)’; and‘Educated girls are valued as bridesbecause they run their houses well’.

Among disadvantaged castes, a fewrespondents felt that educated brideswere in high demand, e.g. due to theirbetter employment opportunities (‘nowa-days the government also gives jobs towomen’). But many others took the viewthat educated daughters were difficult tomarry. If we educate our girls, they said,we will have to find an educated husbandfor them, and educated families ask for ahigher dowry (‘note mangenge, motor-cycle mangenge’), complained onemother. As a poor dhobi from UttarPradesh put it, ‘Achhe ladkon ka bhiabhav hai (there is a shortage of goodboys)’. Another explained that ‘to find aneducated bridegroom, we would have tolook in a more distant place’. In casteswith a strong patriarchal tradition (notnecessarily the poor or less well-educated ones), some parents also feelthat the boy’s family is unlikely to have anyinterest in an educated bride: ‘Girls onlyneed to do housework and go to their in-laws’ house; nobody wants to marry aneducated girl.’

‘Shadi mein pareshani hoti hai. Achheparivar ke ladke vaale ise pasand nahinkarte. Ladki ko naukri to karni nahin.

(It is a problem to get educated girlsmarried. Good families don’t like

educated girls. It’s not that girls aregoing to get a job.)’

A farmer from Singapatti(Mathura, U.P.).

The social dimension ofmotivation

So far we have discussed parental viewson education as if they stood on their own,independently of other parents’ views. Inreality, however, parental attitudes arehighly interdependent: what one personthinks about the value of education may

not raise the costs of her marriage verymuch, since there are plenty of better-educated grooms around. In communi-ties with low levels of male education,however, parents may be more appre-hensive about educating a daughter, forfear of not being able to find a suitablyeducated groom for her at a reasonable‘price’.

‘Garib ki ladki nahin padh paati haikyonki padhai par paisa adhik kharchhota hai. Aur vivah par bhi dahej dena

padhta hai padhi likhi ladki ko.(Girls from poor families are not ableto study because it is too expensive.

Also, to get an educated girl married,one has to give a dowry.)’

Forty-year old Suta Das, anagricultural labourer in Ram

Khangooray (Muzaffarpur, Bihar).

This reasoning is consistent with thePROBE responses. Among the better-educated castes, the tendency was to saythat, up to a point at least, a daughter’seducation made her marriage easier.Further comments included: ‘The firstquestion of the boy’s family about the girlis ‘Kitni tak padhi hai (how far has she

Parents give up on educating a daughter as soon as the expenditure or

effort involved in sending her to school rises above a low threshold.

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be strongly influenced by other persons’views on this within his or her family,community or neighbourhood. In thatsense, the motivation for education hasan important social dimension.

‘Padhane se kuchh to faidahoga tabhi to bhej rahe hain.

Sari duniya bhej rahi hai.(Obviously there is some benefit fromeducation. That is why we are sending

the children to school. The whole worldis sending them.’

Rajwati, an illiterate OBC woman fromKhurd (Dholpur, Rajasthan).

To illustrate, when asked why theirdaughters never went to school, someparents simply say ‘girls don’t go to schoolin our community’. In other words, theyare following what they see as a socialnorm. Some go on to say that if otherparents sent their daughters to school,

practical rather than principled grounds:some of them, for instance, feel that it ispointless to enact another law that will notbe applied, others that it is futile to sendchildren to non-functional schools. On thewhole, the attitude of parents towardscompulsory education is overwhelminglypositive. One reason for this is preciselythat they grasp the social dimension ofschooling, and see that many parentswould be encouraged to send their ownchildren to school if others did so too. (Insome cases, they also see compulsoryeducation as a means of protectingchildren from negligent parents.

‘Mere samay mein aisa kanoon rehta toaaj main bhi padha-likha hota.

(If there had been such a law in my time,I would be an educated man today.)’

A thirty two-year old dalit labourer fromKarma (Ranchi, Bihar).

‘The country will progress. Forinstance, pesticides will be usedproperly. Last year, pesticidesmeant for wheat were used byilliterate farmers for chana .’

A twenty seven-year old tailor fromTigariya Sancha (Dewas, Madhya

Pradesh).

The social dimension of parental motiv-ation points to the possibility of achievinga social consensus on the need for everychild to go to school. A consensus of thiskind has indeed been achieved in Kerala.As one researcher observes, whenparents in Kerala are asked why they sendtheir children to school, some of them don’tknow what to say, simply because theytake it as self-evident that going to schoolis what children do. There are other inter-esting illustrations of the possibility ofachieving a social consensus on educa-tion being an essential part of every child’supbringing, notably in Himachal Pradesh(see chapter 9). Building such a con-sensus is a crucial aspect of the univer-salization of elementary education.

then they would send their own daughterstoo. As these statements bring out, thesocial dimension of education can haveboth positive as well as negativeinfluences.

Another interesting illustration comesfrom a Gujjar woman who, when askedwhether she felt that it was important for agirl to be educated, said: ‘How do I know?I have never met an educated woman inmy life’. Here again, the coin has bothpositive and negative sides: just aspeople’s understanding of the value ofeducation can be limited because of a lackof familiarity with educated persons, it canalso be enhanced by the influence of ‘rolemodels’. In some villages, for instance,we noticed that the woman who ran theanganwadi (pre-primary childcare centre)had raised people’s awareness of theemployment opportunities of educatedwomen.

It is worth noting that the social influenceof role models depends a great deal onwhat people see as the relevant ‘referencegroup’. Suppose, for instance, that a high-caste boy in a remote village gets a goodjob after completing his studies. This islikely to raise the perceived value ofeducation for high-caste boys. Whetherthis experience has any impact amonglow-caste families, however, depends onhow far they consider themselves to sharethe same employment opportunities.Similarly, its impact on the perceived valueof female education may or may not besignificant, depending on the nature of thegender division of labour. Generally, if asociety is sharply divided on the basis ofclass, caste and gender, the influence ofrole models is likely to be more confined.This point will come up again in chapter9.

Further evidence of the social dimensionof education comes from parents’responses on compulsory education.Asked ‘Would you approve of primaryeducation being made compulsory for allchildren?’, a large proportion (80 per cent)answer ‘Yes’ (see chart 2.7). Note alsothat most of the other respondents areneutral or undecided rather than opposedto compulsory education, and that eventhose who oppose it do so mainly on

If schooling is a social norm for the

community, girls are sent to school.


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Can motivation beinfluenced?

We have seen earlier that parentalmotivation is not immutable: parents aremuch more concerned about theirchildren’s education today than they werefifty or even ten years ago. Recentchanges in parental attitudes towardsfemale education are particularlyencouraging. Not so long ago, negativeviews of female education were endemicamong north Indian parents (one suchview, among the more extreme ones, wasthat an educated woman was likely tobecome a widow). Today, most parentsconsider at least some education as animportant part of a daughter’s upbringing,even if their ambitions in that respectcontinue to be modest.

strongly influenced. This has been amplydemonstrated by the Total Literacy Camp-aign, in districts where this campaign hasreceived the full support of political leadersand popular organizations.

Before concluding on parental motiv-ation, we should mention that high in-terest in education on the part of individualparents goes hand in hand with a certainamount of collective inertia in schoolingmatters. Parents seldom translate theirprivate complaints about the local schoolinto constructive action, or even into collec-tive efforts to draw the attention of teachersor administrators to the deficiencies of theschooling system. This inertia, in turn,has various roots such as the powerless-ness of parents and the social divisionsthat fragment village communities. Wewill return to these issues in chapter 5.

Parental motivation is likely to continueto rise in the future, perhaps more rapidlythan most observers expect today. It isnatural to ask whether this trend can beaccelerated through public intervention.Our answer is yes.

Indeed, the PROBE survey suggests thatsome positive achievements have alreadybeen made in that respect. Employmentreservation policies, for instance, haveclearly played a role in enhancing theeducational aspirations of parents fromdisadvantaged castes. Similarly, wefound much evidence that the provision ofschool meals or food rations, freetextbooks and other incentives had aneffect on the willingess of parents to sendtheir children to school. Even withoutmaterial inducements, it seems thatparental motivation for education can be

THE TOTAL LITERACY CAMPAIGN

Chronically drought-prone Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu is one of

India’s most backward districts. More than 85 per cent of its

people live in abject poverty. A transformation in the lives ofthese people began in 1991 with the launch of the Total

Literacy Campaign (TLC) covering almost 250,000 learners, 70

per cent of them women. An impressive instance of women’sempowerment in the wake of the Total Literacy Campaign

relates to stone-quarrying. A syndicate of private contractors

had traditionally exploited workers, mostly women, in over 450stone quarries in Pudukottai. In 1991, when contractors did

not bid above the minimum price set by the government, the

District Collector decided to lease the quarries to over 4,000women who had organized themselves into 152 groups.

Control over the quarries greatly increased their economic

security. This is a case where women linked the TLC tolivelihoods. They not only acquired basic educational skills,

but also obtained special training in leadership, decision-

making, management and business organization.

The voluntary campaign mode was first tried out by the

Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad which mobilized the localadministration, non-governmental organizations, volunteers,

social activists and citizens to ensure that, by 1990, Ernakulam

district was declared 100 per cent literate. Since then, the


25

National Literacy Mission has been instrumental in encourag-

ing other states and districts to adopt the TLC mode.

Where actively implemented, the TLC has enabled millions to

read and write. It has opened up extraordinary opportunities

especially for women and those belonging to socially backwardcastes. The TLC has helped to change societal attitudes,

modify notions of institutional responsibilities, and revise

concepts of social accountability. Significant changes arenoticeable in the self-esteem and confidence of women.

Another major achievement of the TLC in many districts is that

it has boosted the demand for elementary education, leading tohigher enrolment, improved accountability, and greater parental

expectations from the schooling system. The campaigns have

also promoted greater social cohesion. For instance, the ExpertGroup evaluating the TLCs in 1994 reported: ‘During the height

of communal tensions in 1990-2, the campaign areas specially in

the village areas did not witness any major communal distur-bances. Incidents with communal potential were nipped in the

bud by the villagers and major disturbances averted.’

Concerted public action in the TLCs has imparted more than

just reading and writing skills; it has ushered in a consensus for

greater learning and societal change.

Based on contributions by Arun Ghosh and Nitya Rao.

3.2. EducationalHopes and theSchooling System

High parental motivation for educationdoes not necessarily lead to regularschool attendance, or even school enrol-ment. For one thing, motivation for edu-cation need not be the same as motivationfor schooling: parents may be convincedof the value of education, and yet feel thatthe schooling system fails to providemuch education (or the kind of educationthey are looking for). For another, even ifparents are keen to send their children toschool, they may be unable to do so forvarious reasons: lack of facilities, highcosts of schooling, need for the child athome, and so on. These two issues aretaken up in this section and the next one,respectively.

Wanted: ‘Qualityeducation’

The distinction between motivation for‘education’ and interest in ‘schooling’raises a simple question: What kind ofeducation are parents looking for? Anapproximate answer to this question is

— manual work at school is seen as adiversion. This does not mean thatincluding some manual work in a schoolcurriculum is a bad idea, indeed there arestrong pedagogical arguments for doingso. The point is that (a) the case for manualwork at school does not lie in parentaldemand, of which there is very little, and(b) the pedagogical argument applies toall children, not just those with a working-class background.

Coming to the negative side of our earlierstatement, it says that parents aspire toquality education ‘in the common senseof the term’. Common perceptions of whatconstitutes quality education, unfor-tunately, are heavily influenced by thedominant value system. To a large extent,education is seen by poor parents as anopportunity for their children to join theranks of government employees and theurbanized middle-class. These ‘rolemodels’ may have little education in thesense of Tagore (see p.6), but at least theyhave degrees, and these are widely seenas the main purpose of going to school.

One particular aspect of this outlook is acertain resistance to pedagogicalinitiatives that challenge the dominantvalue system. Rural parents, we found,are rather conservative in schooling

that what they aspire to is not very differentfrom what most readers of this report arelikely to want for their own children —‘quality education’ in the common senseof the term.

This statement has a positive as well asa negative side. On the positive side, itmeans that poor parents are concernedabout the quality of education, and alsothat what is judged to constitute qualityeducation does not vary fundamentallybetween different social groups. Thiscontrasts with the notion, common in elitecircles, that privileged families need onetype of ‘quality education’ while poorfamilies need another type.

One specific example of such doublestandards is the widespread notion thatpoor parents want their children to learnvarious manual skills at school, rather thanto acquire intellectual knowledge. Thepremise for this view seems to be thatmanual skills are ‘more useful to thesechildren’ than literacy, numeracy, criticalenquiry and related abilities. The PROBEsurvey found little support for this viewamong ordinary parents. If anything, theyseem to have some aversion towardsmanual work at school. The mainconcern, for most parents, is that childrenshould develop their intellectual abilities

Right:

Poor parents often see

education as an

opportunity for their

children to join the

ranks of salaried

employees or the

urbanized

middle-class.


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matters. Far from clamouring for alter-native pedagogy, they are quite at homewith traditional teaching methods, schooluniforms, formal examinations, and evenphysical punishment. Recent attempts topopularize ‘joyful learning’, for instance,have often been met with scepticism. Oneparent went so far as to complain that‘teachers send their own children toconvent schools, but make village childrendance like monkeys’. This is not to denythat joyful-learning methods may beextremely useful in sustaining the interestof children, or to claim that the scepticismof parents is immutable.

‘Aspirations have become souniversalized that today it is practicallyimpossible to distinguish between the

dreams of an average family anywherein the country, for their chi1dren’sfuture. They both covet the samecentralized system: Board exams,

English medium, uniforms, plenty ofbooks and homework. Pioneering andinnovative attempts at modifying the

curriculum to make it more contextualand relevant, reducing the burden ofbooks, teaching in local dialects, and

lowering costs by employing ‘non-degree holders’ are all perceived as

discriminatory and against theirinterests by the common man... Giventhe opportunity they would rather puttheir children in the most elitist schoolwithin their means, just as we would.’

(SIDH, a non-government organizationwith a long-standing experience of

educational initiatives in the U.P. hills.Similar impressions arise from the

PROBE survey.)

Social perceptions of what constitutes‘quality education’ may improve in thefuture, and this should be seen as onepart of the long-term agenda oftransforming the education system. Themore immediate problem is that qualityeducation, however defined, involvescertain minimal requirements (such asadequate facilities, responsible teachers,an active classroom and an engaging

numerous cases of children who, likeParkash, were still unable to read (or evento recognize two-letter words) after severalyears of schooling. This picture of dismalpupil achievements, especially in deprivedareas, is consistent with other recentstudies (see Box, p. 28).

There are also other reasons whyparents have little faith in schooling, evenwhen they regard education as highlyvaluable. For instance, they may feel thateducation is a good thing but that it is notreally achievable for them. Or they mayconsider that the benefits of education areimportant only beyond a certain stage, andthat there is little chance of their childreaching that stage. These and othervariants of the discouragement effect haveto be kept in view in interpreting schoolingdecisions, especially among dis-advantaged families.

Child reluctance

The discouragement effect applies notonly to parents but also to children. Theinitial disposition of children towardsschooling is usually positive. When aschool functions, their motivation is easilysustained. In fact, in the better schools, itis a joy to see children’s enthusiasm anddrive to learn. Even in schools whereclasses are far from exciting, children oftenlook forward to going to school: it is achance to interact with other children, awelcome change of atmosphere, and aliberation from the chores of family labour.

‘Ghar ka kaam karna padta hai; isliyeskool jane mein maja aata hai .

(I have to do all the housework; that iswhy I like going to school).’

Anju, an eleven-year old girl fromVishanpura (Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan).

But there are also many cases of childrenbeing gradually discouraged from attend-ing school. One common cause of dis-couragement is beating or humiliationfrom the teacher. ‘Padhate kam, maartezyada (teaches too little, beats too much)’is one child’s succinct view of his teacher,

curriculum) which are simply not met atpresent. The dismal condition of theschools precludes quality education of anykind, and is the main reason why highparental motivation for education oftencombines with open contempt for theschooling system.

The discouragementeffect

Rukmini is the only daughter in a familyof four children in village Sarwana (Ujjain,M.P.). She has never been to school. Hermother, forty-year old Tejubai, is wild withthe local government school. ‘If we sendthe girl to school, we have to pay a labourerto replace her, and the girl learns nothing.What do we gain? See this other childwho is in class 5. She knows nothing. Myson Parkash studied till class 6 — heknows nothing.’

Similarly, eleven-year old Chander Pal’slack of progress in school in Mujahidpur(Muzaffarnagar, U.P.) has greatly dis-couraged his father: ‘Bachhe ko barabarguide nahin milne se pichhad gaya hai;bahut kamzor hai (without regularguidance the child has been left behind;he is very weak).’ Another parent voiceshis anger with the school there: ‘Char saalek kaksha mein padha do, phir bhibachhe ko kuchh nahin ayega (put a childfor four years in the same class, he stillwon’t learn anything).’

As these stories illustrate, parentalhopes of quality education are oftenmassively frustrated. This, in turn,discourages them from sending theirchildren to school regularly even whenthey have a genuine interest in education.The above stories are not isolated cases,and the ‘discouragement effect’ is ex-perienced to varying degree by a largenumber of parents. Their complaintsabout the schooling system are endless.

Slow progress at school is one of themain causes of parental frustration.Though the PROBE survey did not includea formal assessment of pupil achieve-ments, interviews with children made itclear that many of them had learnt verylittle at school. For instance, we found


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shared by many a pupil. In Jaitro Banjari(Palamau, Bihar), ten-year old Rajesh iskeen to study and become a daroga(constable), but the master beats him somuch and explains so little that he is onthe verge of dropping out. It is, in fact, notuncommon for a child to actually drop outafter being terrorized by the teacher.Beatings from classmates, lack of com-prehension and plain boredom are otherpossible causes of discouragement.Social discrimination at school (e.g.neglect of dalit children by upper-casteteachers) is another common cause ofchild reluctance, especially among dis-advantaged families.

‘School mein thik se padhai nahin hogi,phir kya faida padhne se.

(What’s the point of studying when thereis no proper teaching at school?)’

A ten-year old boy from a dalit family inUdaipur (Dhanbad, Bihar).

Whether it applies to children or parents,the discouragement effect is particularlycommon in underprivileged families. Thefrustrations of a non-functioning school,for instance, are particularly hard to bearfor those who cannot afford private tuitionsand are unable to create a learningenvironment at home. Similarly, first-generation learners and their parents arehighly vulnerable to the discouragementeffect: illiterate parents often find it difficultto judge what goes on in the classroom,to get a hearing from the teacher, and ofcourse to help their children with theirstudies. Not infrequently, they end upblaming themselves or their children forthe failures of the schooling system.

3.3. The Challengeof RegularAttendance

Even in families that are not‘discouraged’ by the schooling system,sending a child to school on a regularbasis can be a major challenge. Two

common obstacles are the dependenceof the family on child labour, and the highcosts of schooling.

Work vs. study?

Upendra is a ten-year old boy from villageSanwarsi (Dewas, M.P.). His parents ownno land or other productive assets, andare heavily indebted. Unable to provideschooling to all their children, they havedecided to concentrate their resources

and efforts on Upendra’s younger brotherand sister. Upendra himself dropped outafter class 4. He now helps to support thefamily by carrying bricks at nearbyconstruction sites. He works the wholeday for a meagre wage.

Upendra’s story illustrates the tragicproblem of full-time child labour. As wesaw in chapter 2, however, only a minorityof out-of-school children are in this situa-tion. Upendra’s own story is quite excep-tional, among the testimonies collected

PUPIL ACHIEVEMENTS IN MADHYA PRADESH

‘Padhai achhi nahin hoti (the teaching isn’t good),’ is Nandu’s uncle’s commentas soon as the local primary school in Tigariya Sancha (Dewas, M.P.) is mentioned.‘Padhai achhi nahin hoti,’ he repeats, as his nephew fumbles and fails to read thesimple text.

Nandu is 10, and has been to school for four years. He can make out individualletters but cannot pronounce a single word. His elder sister, who dropped out afterclass 3, cannot read either. Nor can his friend Chena Lal who is in class 5.

Whatever has been happening (or not happening) inside the classroom? Chena Laloffers us one answer: Nothing much has been happening inside the classroom.The teachers rarely taught — and when they did teach it was usually by asking thepupils to copy out sections of the Hindi book. Chena Lal has confirmed whatNandu’s uncle knew already: sending Nandu to school has been a waste ofprecious time and money.

Nandu’s is not an isolated case of failure to learn much at school. Here are a sampleof findings from recent studies of pupil achievements in Madhya Pradesh:

!"!"!"!"!"A study of schools located in a privileged urban zone in Madhya Pradesh foundthat 60 per cent of class-5 pupils had not mastered competencies in Hindi ormathematics that would be expected of class-2 students. In an impoverished ruralzone of the same state, no class-5 pupil had mastered these competencies (Govindaand Varghese, 1993).

!"!"!"!"!"Similar findings are reported in a study of ten schools in Patan and Katni blocksof Jabalpur district. In Patan, pupil achievements were uniformly poor — class-2students could barely write their names. In Katni, achievements were higher, butstill far from impressive: among class-2 pupils, 82 per cent could copy from thetextbook, but only 54 per cent could read, and 19 per cent could write from dictation(Gupta et al., 1997).

!"!"!"!"!"A study of fourteen functional schools in Betul district found that half of thechildren who had passed class 3 were unable to add two numbers of two digitseach, without ‘carry-over’. Only 5 per cent could do a similar addition with ‘carry-over’.

!"!"!"!"!"A summary of studies on pupil achievements by the National Council ofEducational Research and Training (Sharma, 1998) considers that in MadhyaPradesh ‘only 15 per cent of fourth-graders can be called literate’ in the sense that


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by the PROBE survey. According to thissurvey (and other recent studies), the vastmajority of young out-of-school childrenin rural areas are in a very differentsituation: they work mainly as part-timefamily labourers, helping their parents athome and in the fields.

What is not entirely clear is the extent towhich the demands of family labour clashwith schooling. To shed some light onthis, Chart 3.5 presents some data on thetime utilization of a random sub-sampleof out-of-school children from the PROBEhouseholds. The sub-sample is relativelysmall, and the results are only suggestive.However, they confirm a basic patternobserved in a number of other studies:that the work hours of young out-of-schoolchildren in rural India are relatively short.On average, boys aged 6-12 who are notattending school worked for around fourhours on the day preceding the survey —about two hours more than school-goingboys. In the case of out-of-school girls,work hours are a little longer: about fivehours on average, again two hours morethan school-going girls (chart 2.9).

These figures have to be read in the lightof the fact that school hours in rural Indiaare quite short. In practice, a village schoolis typically open for about 150 days in theyear. On those 150 days, the school is

open for at most six hours, often muchless. Unless family labour involves rigidwork hours that consistently clash withschool timings, it is unlikely to preventchildren from attending school withreasonable regularity. And the obs-ervations of PROBE investigators suggestthat, in many cases, the activities involved(e.g. fetching wood, grazing animals, andvarious types of domestic work) do allowrelatively flexible work hours.

In interpreting Chart 3.5, it is alsoimportant to bear in mind that, whenchildren work rather than go to school, thedirection of causation need not run fromchild labour to non-attendance. In manycases, it is the other way round: childrenwork because they are unable to go toschool. Eight-year old Manoj in villageKaranjia (West Singhbum, Bihar), for


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instance, dropped out in class 1 becauseof being teased and beaten by otherchildren; now he spends the whole daytaking the cattle out to graze.

Having said this, there are situationswhere children have rigid work duties thatmay be difficult to reconcile with school-ing. Two specific cases are worth noting.The first case concerns eldest daughtersin poor families with several children.Consider, for instance, eleven-year oldSimla, the eldest daughter of a pooradivasi family in Benipura (Morena, M.P.).She does the housework and the child-care so that the parents can go and workas labourers. Her brothers and her young-er sister are enrolled, but her parents seeno way of sending her to school. Manyeldest daughters, like Simla, are mobi-lized by their parents to look after youngersiblings. Sometimes they do so for sheerconvenience, and the real problem is alack of commitment to the education ofdaughters. In other cases, e.g. when bothparents work outside the home, child careis a real issue. One possible solution tothis problem lies in collective arrange-ments for child care, such as angan-wadis. Several states do have functioninganganwadis, but the performance of thenorth Indian states in this respect is verypoor.

Second, in some families there is aproblem of dependence on full-time childlabour during periods of peak agriculturalactivity. Consider, for instance, nine-yearold Ashok who is in class 3 in thegovernment school in Ladoonda (Jhun-jhunu, Rajasthan). He is the only son of adalit farmer with three acres of land. Hisfather says that Ashok does not go toschool when harvesting needs to be done.In principle, short-term absence shouldnot lead a child to drop out of the schoolingsystem, but in practice this often happens.One solution is to adjust the schoolcalendar and timings, say district-wise, soas to avoid any serious clash with agri-cultural activity. This approach has beensuccessfully adopted in some states(notably Himachal Pradesh), and there arepossibilities of extending it elsewhere.Care must be taken, however, to ensurethat calendar adjustments are genuinelygeared to the needs of deprived children

SCHOOLING IN AMBEDKAR NAGAR:TEACHERS’ VIEWS AND PARENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

In the sprawling, crowded low-income colony of Ambedkar Nagar in south Delhi,most children do get enrolled in one of the 30-odd municipal primary schools or thegrowing number of small private schools. But survival up to class 5 proves moredifficult: children either leave school or come and go intermittently.

As part of a survey of schooling in Ambedkar Nagar, we asked both municipalschool teachers and parents why children did not reach the end of the primarystage. Parents and teachers came up with very different explanations.

Teachers claimed that since many residents are new migrants and retain strong tieswith their village communities, the families often return to the village for festivalsand functions, or for the harvest season. This can cause absence from school foras long as two months. This disruption causes major problems for the child:catching up is tough because of the adverse home environment, and in extremecases the child may even have been struck off the rolls during his or her absence.Child labour is also mentioned by teachers as a major reason for pupils leavingschool or not attending regularly.

Parents told a completely different story. Far from being new migrants, over 70 percent of them had lived in Ambedkar Nagar for 10 to 15 years. Movement betweenvillage and city was not frequent or for long periods. One mother explained thesituation thus: ‘We sold our house in the village when we came here. I wish wecould go back to my village but where will we stay? The relatives’ houses are alsofull. And it is very costly for the whole family to travel. Besides, how can I leavemy work for so long, and who will take care of the old people if I go away?’

Contrary to teacher perceptions, full-time or continuous employment for childrenoutside the home was not common either. Not a single family had a child under theage of twelve working outside the home on a permanent basis. Children do runerrands, assist in chores, stand in queues for water and kerosene, look aftersiblings. But since school hours are short (four and a half hours each day), most ofthem can combine these responsiblities with going to school.

The hostility between teachers and parents is clear in the interactions betweenthem, and has even led to incidents of violence. Caste and class factors enhancethese tensions, for the teachers have BA or MA degrees while parents have noformal education. Teachers regard postings in these poor neighbourhoods ashardship postings. Parents complain that teachers have no sympathy for thepredicament of poor pupils. Children are the innocent victims of this mutualantagonism.

Rukmini Banerji.


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THE CHILD MOTHERS

Eldest daughters in rural families

often have to forfeit both their

childhood and their education. BinaKumari of village Baridih (Ranchi

district, Bihar) is only one among

several such children encounteredduring the PROBE survey. Her

mother works as an agricultural

labourer and her father doesconstruction work. When Bina was

in class 3, her mother fell ill and she

was made to drop out of school todo the housework. Now she is

twelve and works ten hours a day

looking after the house and theyounger siblings, and taking the

cattle out to graze. In her spare time

she sometimes looks at her brothers’textbooks, striving to make sense of

them.

Ironically, several circumstances

could have worked in Bina’s favour.

The family is reasonably well-offwith several pacca rooms, a cycle

and seven heads of cattle. Bina’s

father claims very high motivationfor education for both boys and

girls. Certainly the other children are

all enrolled.

Bina seems all set to continue the

life of labour. In this communitygirls are married off anywhere

between 13 and 16 and life in the

marital household will in allprobability require no less sacrifice

and hardship than the life she leads

now. Bina’s father, for his part, willbe relieved to pay less dowry for his

hard-working little daughter since

she is not educated. In hiscommunity educated girls have to

pay more dowry.

ANGANWADIS CAN HELP

‘Skool jayegi, jab ye sab bade ho jayenge (she will go to school when these grow alittle older)’, was the father’s answer when we asked when eight-year old Radhawould be enrolled in school. We looked around at Radha’s siblings, aged sixmonths, two years and three years, and wondered if that day would come late — ornever. Radha’s mother had to go out to the fields and could not do without herhelp at home.

Radha’s predicament could have been avoided had a creche or child-care facilitybeen available. This is indeed one of the aims of the anganwadis run under theIntegrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). In fact, a well-functioning ICDScentre is meant to provide much more. It would look after the nutrition and health-care needs of pregnant and lactating women. It would enable poor women andtheir elder children to go to work or school without constraints. It would even lookafter the developmental needs of the young children placed in its care.

A well-functioning anganwadi has much to contribute to the success of schooling.If pregnant women are looked after then babies are less likely to have a low birth-weight, with all its attendant problems. Providing the right kind of stimulation aswell as food to small children helps their healthy development. And a good pre-school programme enhances the readiness of young children to enter school.

The performance of anganwadis in the PROBE states, however, is very poor. Tostart with, coverage is patchy: barely one-third of the sample villages had ananganwadi. Secondly, an anganwadi is judged purely on the regularity and qualityof the mid-day meal it supplies to the children. Even by this basic criterion, mostparents felt that the facility was not satisfactory. Thirdly, anganwadis had nolinkage with the primary schools, either in terms of their location or in terms offulfilling the needs of elder caregivers.

In Himachal Pradesh, by contrast, about half of the villages have a functioninganganwadi, and 85 per cent of these anganwadis are considered as ‘satisfactory’by the local headteacher. One comparative study of schooling in Sirmaur district(H.P.) and Allahabad district (U.P.) found that the functioning of anganwadis wasvery poor in Allahabad but reasonably good in Himachal Pradesh. This is one ofthe circumstances that have helped Himachali women to send their children toschool in spite of their heavy work-loads (see chapter 9). In Kerala, the situation iseven better: 99 per cent of the villages have an anganwadi.


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and their parents, rather than to the con-venience of teachers or school admini-strators.

Schooling is expensive

‘Garibi bahut hai, kahan se padhaenge(we are very poor, how can we educatethem)?’ is a fair summary (due to a poorfarmer from Pahai in Gazipur, U.P.) of thesentiment of many poor parents. In fact,‘schooling is too expensive’ came first (justahead of the need for child labour) amongthe reasons cited by PROBE respondentsto explain why a child had never been toschool. As noted in chapter 2, survey dataon schooling expenses confirm that thecash costs of sending a child to schoolare far from negligible.

A breakdown of these costs is presentedin Chart 3.6. The total costs as reportedby parents are quite close to teachers’estimates, suggesting that the data arereasonably reliable. The most expensiveitem is clothing, followed by ‘textbooks andstationery’. Interestingly, expenditure ongirls tends to be a little higher thanexpenditure on boys. This is not becauseof a bias against boys, but reflects thehigher perceived costs of female clothing.

The average cost of sending a child toschool works out at Rs 318 per year. Thismay not look high, but it is a substantialburden for a poor family. Two furtherremarks are due. First, this figure reflectsactual expenditure, not the expenditure

that would be required to cover a pupil’sbasic needs (in terms of clothing,textbooks, stationery, and so on). Manychildren go to school in rags, and with onlya few of the textbooks they are supposedto possess.

Second, parents do not have the freedomto meet the annual expenditure of (say)Rs 318 as and when means permit; rather,they are often constrained to produce cashat short notice to meet immediate needs(such as a new textbook or set of clothes).

This creates a potential liquidity problem,even when the annual expenditure isotherwise affordable. The liquidity prob-lem is one reason why households withat least one member in regular wageemployment seem to find it much easierto send their children to school than otherhouseholds.

The costs of schooling can besubstantially reduced through publicpolicy. School meals, free textbooks andscholarships are some of the means thatcan be used in this respect. Here again,major initiatives have already been takenin some states (e.g. Tamil Nadu andKerala), but the general pattern remainsone of limited and haphazard intervention.The national school-meal programme, forinstance, is yet to take off (see chapter 8).Another important means of action is toimprove the quality of schooling: howmuch parents are prepared to spend onschooling depends a great deal on whatthey perceive to be getting in return.

ROKKAIYA BEGUM’SUNIFORM

When she was in class 2, RokkaiyaBegum missed school for fifteendays as her parents could not affordto buy her a school uniform. Hername was struck off the rolls.Poverty causes many children todrop out when their parents cannotafford the incidental expenses whichcrop up. In Rokkaiya’s case it wasthe school uniform, which wascompulsory in those days, but itcould even be something as simpleas a slate or a textbook.

Once children have dropped out it isoften difficult to get them back toschool. Today, uniforms are nolonger compulsory in RokkaiyaBegum’s school. Rokkaiya’ssiblings are all enrolled. She remainsat home.

Schooling is a major financial burden,

especially for poor families with several

children of school-going age.


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Other hurdles

So far in this section, we have focusedon the major economic costs of schooling:the opportunity cost of child labour andthe direct costs of schooling. These arevery often perceived by parents as the mainobstacles. Many other hurdles, however,can stand in the way of regular schoolattendance. Absence of a school at a con-venient distance, and lack of interest onthe part of the child, are two importantexamples that have already been dis-cussed.

Illness in the family is another commonproblem. PROBE investigators cameacross a number of pupils who had fever,and many parents said that illness wasamong the reasons why their child wasoccasionally absent from school. Youngchildren are particularly vulnerable tocommon infectious diseases. Illnesseven causes some children to drop out,as resuming studies after a prolongedabsence from school can be difficult.Illness of other members of the family canalso interfere with a child’s studies, e.g.as the costs of schooling become harderto bear or as help is needed at home. InKedal (Palamau, Bihar), a seven-year oldboy dropped out because his father fell illand he was asked to help in the fields.We also found several cases of a daughterbeing kept at home to manage the house-hold because her mother was unwell.

Another hurdle may be described as‘alienation’: some parents simply feel thatthe schooling system is ‘not for them’.This feeling can arise in various ways.There may be no tradition or culture ofschooling in their caste or community. Theteachers may treat them with indifference,contempt or even hostility. Their childrenmay be discriminated against at school.For these and other reasons, someparents conclude that it is better to stayaway.

Whether they take the form of highschooling expenses, or economic depen-dence on child labour, or inaccessibleschooling facilities, or illness in the family,most hurdles are more forbidding for girlsthan for boys. In many families, the edu-cation of daughters is treated as an

HEALTH AND SCHOOLING

A recent survey conducted in four villages of Palghat district (Kerala) and threevillages of Allahabad district (Uttar Pradesh) examines the link between health andschooling. The survey indicates that convenient access to basic health-care inPalghat is an important reason for high school attendance. In the district ofAllahabad, where school attendance is much lower than in Palghat, access tohealth-care was not only more limited but also more regressive. Respondentspointed out that they often had to seek private treatment as facilities ingovernment hospitals were available only to those who had the right contacts. Ingovernment hospitals, patients often had to pay for services that are meant to beprovided free of cost. As one poor woman remarked, ‘We do not have the reach toavail of government hospitals. They do not give medicines or anything. Whateverthe government gives to the hospital they just sell it in the block.’

As would be expected, illness was less frequent in Palghat than in Allahabad. Fewchildren in Palghat had to miss school either due to their own illness or onaccount of having to care for an ailing family member. In Allahabad there werecases where children had been withdrawn from school for long periods onaccount of a family member’s prolonged illness. Further, girls were the first to bewithdrawn when a family member’s illness increased the work-load in the house.

A telling sign of poor health care in Allahabad is the high infant mortality rate.Nearly half the women interviewed had lost at least one child; several had lostthree or more. Common child diseases included diarrhoea, tetanus and fever.‘Shall I worry about the survival of my children, or their schooling?’ asked onewoman. This remark came as a strong reminder that when life is so precarious,health is a higher priority than schooling.

Another consequence of high infant mortality was high fertility. Mothers inAllahabad felt that many children were needed to ensure that at least some ofthem survived to adulthood. Over half of them had five or more children. InPalghat, by contrast, most women with two or three children had opted forsterilization. This reveals both their confidence in the survival of children, andtheir access to safe sterilization.

High fertility reduced the schooling prospects of children in several ways: (1) Itreduced the resources (time, energy, money) available to each child; (2) Itincreased the work-load on elder daughters, who are often expected to look afteryounger siblings; (3) Complicated pregnancies drained financial resources anddisrupted the normal functioning of the household, making it harder for children toattend school regularly.

In short, schooling and health facilities complement each other: better health-caremakes it easier for children to go to school, just as better education helps peopleto utilize health facilities. Better health-care would also help to reduce genderdisparities in school attendance.

Nidhi Mehrotra.


33

‘MY SCHOOLING WAS ENDED’

‘I feel bad that my schooling was ended,’ said the young girl.‘I was a good and regular student. I always answered thequestions asked in class correctly and because of that I gotthe teacher’s appreciation. I want to go back so I can makesomething of my life and give my village a good name.’ Asshe spoke the bitterness suddenly became too much and sheburst into tears. This girl had studied upto class 6 but herschooling had ended abruptly at puberty when her parentsdecided she had studied enough and should now learnhousework.

The girl’s sadness was echoed by other girls who wereinterviewed in the course of a study of six villages — twoeach in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and TamilNadu. The villages were socially and culturally diverse, butreasons why children had dropped out bore remarkablesimilarities. A sample of 62 drop-out children (32 boys and 30girls) in the 10-14 age group were interviewed. The reasonsfor dropping out turned out to be very different for boys andgirls. All except 2 of the 30 girls had dropped out due to somedomestic crisis or parental pressure. Boys, on the other hand,had usually abandoned their studies owing to their owndisinterest, illness or failure in examinations: parents hadrarely pressed their sons to drop out.

Girls are more easily withdrawn from school for a combinationof social and economic reasons. To start with, householdwork and child-care are seen as the responsibility ofdaughters. Secondly, the economic returns to education areperceived to be high in the case of boys in all six villages.Boys are assets in whose education it is sensible to invest.Girls, for their part, are expected to leave their natal homesafter marriage. When resources are scarce (most parents werecultivators or labourers), the education of boys is givenpriority.

In the two villages in Madhya Pradesh, there were manyexamples of families where girls had been withdrawn fromschool as the loss of their labour was felt to be too costly tobear. ‘While I was my parent’s only child, I was sent toschool. But then I had to leave school to care for my twoyounger sisters and a brother,’ said a thirteen-year old girlwho had dropped out in class 3. ‘My mother simply refusedto send me to school because she has to go to work,’ saidanother. All the girls who had dropped out were engaged inhousehold work. Drop-out boys, on the other hand, wereengaged in wage labour or the family enterprise. All but oneof them had left school of their own accord.

Similarly in the two villages in Maharashtra none of the drop-out girls had left school voluntarily — they had beenwithdrawn because they were felt to be needed at home.

Here, for example, a girl had left school in class 7 when heruncle decided that the time had come for her to tend the cattle.A similar contrast was found in the two villages of Tamil Nadu,with all the girls who had left school doing so in response todomestic demands. However, these girls were engaged inlabour outside the house as well as within. Four out of fiveboys in this state had abandoned school out of personalchoice.

Girls are also victims of parental anxiety. According toparents, daughters study only as far as school facilities withinthe village permit, because it is not safe to send a girl out ofthe village to study. In Digma (Madhya Pradesh), for example,where the local school went up to class 5, few girls hadstudied beyond the primary level. In Kanur (Tamil Nadu),where the village school taught up to class 8, a majority ofgirls had reached this level.

Although parents are positive about male education, this stilldoes not translate into high achievement levels. In everysample village except one, parents were dissatisfied with theperformance of the village school.

Veena Kulkarni.


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expendable item, easily renounced if adifficulty arises. The perceived lack ofeconomic returns to female education (atleast for the parents) contributes a greatdeal to this attitude. When a householdfinds itself unable to send all the childrento school, the tendency is to give priority toboys.

3.4. Schooling as aPopular Struggle

In a middle-class family, sending youngchildren to school on a regular basis is arelatively simple affair. The children areraised from early on in an education-friendly environment; there are few otherdemands on their time; they are healthyand well-fed; the costs of schooling arenot prohibitive (unless the family opts forexpensive private education); the parentsknow how to deal with the teachers andthe bureaucracy; there is someone athome to help the children with their home-work; and so on. It is, thus, easy for policy-makers and other observers with aprivileged background to forget that in poor

rural families — where none of these fa-vourable circumstances apply — sendingchildren to school is an exacting struggle.

One aspect of this struggle is that cruelchoices may have to be made betweenschooling and other opportunities.Sending a child to school may mean lessmoney to buy seeds or medicine, moreback-breaking work for her mother athome, or fewer resources for anotherchild’s education. Another aspect is thatmany different obstacles may come up,ranging from relatively obvious ones suchas household dependence on childlabour and the high costs of schooling tomore subtle ones such as childreluctance, poor health, and the dis-couragement effect.

The chain of circumstances that make itpossible to send a child to school on aregular basis is only as strong as itsweakest link. This is one reason for thefragility of the school attendance processin many underprivileged families. Anothercrucial reason is that leaving school is, byand large, an irreversible process: once achild has dropped out, even for a relativelyshort period, it is often hard to send himor her back to school.

The fragility of the school attendanceprocess struck us on many occasionsduring the field survey. Here are someexamples:!"!"!"!"!"In Mohangarh Bhata (Tikamgarh, M.P.),one girl dropped out after being hit onceby her teacher. In another village, a boywas not allowed by his teacher to continuebecause ‘proper uniform was not worn’.Elsewhere, a child refuses to go to schoolwhen her slate is broken.!"!"!"!"!" ‘An ox was bought when the child wasin class 4; after that she was needed athome.’ (A parent in Tigariya Sancha,Dewas.)!"!"!"!"!" ‘If the demand for khurpis is high, Ikeep my son Ramji at home to help me.’(An artisan in Shivtara (Faizabad, U.P.),who makes khurpis for the whole village.)

As far as public action is concerned, ourfindings point firmly to the need forimproving the quality of schooling.Parents are much less likely to give upthe struggle to educate their children ifthey feel that the village school providesquality education. As will be seen in thecoming chapters, much can also be doneto reduce the private costs of schooling,influence parental motivation, and so on.But these efforts are unlikely to have adramatic impact on their own as long asparents have little faith in the villageschool.

Further, the case for improving the qualityof schooling is not confined to what thiscould do to attract more children to school.No less important is the fact that so manyof those who do go to school get little fromit. As noted earlier, for instance, PROBEinvestigators found quite a few cases ofable children remaining illiterate afterseveral years of schooling. This is anextreme illustration, but the basic problemof wasteful school attendance iswidespread.

Poor parents are more likely to keep up the struggle to send

children to school — if schooling is of satisfactory quality.


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WHY CHILDREN ARE OUT OF SCHOOL: PARENTS’ SURVEY RESPONSES

In section 3.3, we have discussed thedifficulties encountered in sending childrento school, using both survey data andparental testimonies. Some further evidenceon parental perceptions of this issue ispresented in Chart 3.7 and 3.8. Thesecharts are based on interviews with parentsof a random sub-sample of never-enrolledand drop-out children, respectively. In bothcases, the sample size is small, so that theresults are only indicative. Also, there maybe some response biases here. For instance,parents who are unwilling to spend muchmoney on a daughter’s education may find itconvenient to claim that she is ‘needed athome’. Nevertheless, these responsessuggest a few interesting patterns.

First, the economic constraints (both theneed for child labour, and the burden ofschooling expenses) dominate the perceivedobstacles. There is also some indication thatthe child-labour factor is more important forgirls than for boys — mainly in the form ofdaughters being mobilized for domesticwork. For boys, the need for child labour isnot a frequently cited reason for non-enrolment, probably because a boy aged 5 or6 is not seen to have much to contribute tothe household economy. Male child labour,however, does play a significant role as acause of dropping out.

Second, child labour overwhelmingly takesthe form of helping parents at home or inthe fields, rather than of full-time workoutside the household. Wage labour, inparticular, is not a common reason for achild being out of school. In the case ofgirls, child labour consists mainly ofdomestic work and looking after siblings.

Third, child motivation matters. Forinstance, in more than one-third of the casesof male drop-outs, the stated reason wasthat the child did not wish to continuestudying. It appears that if a child isunwilling to go to school, the parents maynot be able to persuade him or her to go.This finding is consistent with theperceptions of the field investigators.

Fourth, in about one-third of the cases ofnever-enrolled children, lack of parentalinterest in schooling was reported as one ofthe reasons. In the case of girls, this patternis consistent with the fact that 10 per cent


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of parents do not consider it important for agirl to study (see section 3.1). In the case ofboys, it may seem surprising that ‘lack ofparental interest’ should be so frequent,given the high level of motivation for maleeducation. One clue to this apparent tensionis the distinction between interest ineducation and interest in schooling (seesection 3.2). It is the latter that getsreflected in Chart 3.8.

Finally, it may seem surprising that ‘poorteaching standards’ is not a more frequentlyreported cause of non-enrolment anddropping-out (except implicitly, e.g. as anunderlying cause of ‘lack of parentalinterest’ in schooling). At first glance, thisdoes not square with endemic complaintsabout the quality of schooling. Ininterpreting this pattern, two points have tobe borne in mind. First, the effect of poorteaching standards is a slow sapping ofparental and child motivation over time, butthe ‘last straw’ that causes a child to dropout is often something else, e.g. illness in thefamily or financial hardship. Respondentsare more likely to report this last straw asthe cause of discontinuation than the slowprocess of discouragement. Second, there isanother crucial difference between ‘poorteaching standards’ on the one hand, and(say) ‘schooling is expensive’ on the other,as reported reasons why a child is out ofschool. In the latter case, the parents mayremember having to decide between twoconcrete alternatives, eg. (in this case) tospend or not to spend on the child’sschooling. Similarly, the response ‘child wasneeded in other activities’ reflects a concretedecision about alternative householdarrangements. In the case of school quality,however, there is no such choice to make:the village school is the village school, andfor most parents there is no other option.When a parent gives up the struggle to get achild educated, he or she is likely to reportthat the struggle had become too hard (e.g.schooling was too expensive), withoutadding that had the village school been up tothe mark, it might have been worthsoldiering on. The latter situation, indeed, isin the realm of the imagination. This, too,helps to explain why ‘poor teachingstandards’ were not often mentioned byparents as the reason for their child beingout of school, even though many of themhad bitter complaints about the state of thevillage school.

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CHAPTER FOUR

THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT

"Our Constitution fathers did not intend that we just set up hovels, put students there, giveuntrained teachers, give them bad textbooks, no play grounds and say, we have complied withArticle 45 and primary education is expanding... They meant that real education should be givento our children between the ages of 6 and 14."

(Shri M.C. Chagla, Education Minister, 1964)

Six-year old Reena is not

keen to go to school in themorning, and it is not difficultto understand why. When

the PROBE team visited herschool in Salempur(Muzaffarnagar, U.P.), they

found the little children ofclasses 1 and 2 huddledtogether like "bhed bhakri ka

jhund" (a herd of sheep andgoats). The other childrencrowded the three small,

dark and dirty rooms whichmake up the school building.The premises were gloomy

and virtually bare, not a greatsurprise since the buildinghas no lock.

The school's fourteachers are equally

unmotivated. Except for theheadmaster, none of themwere teaching when the

investigators arrived. Theclass-1 teacher did not lookas though he had anything to

do with his small charges.

Villagers, for their part, have

strong charges against theteachers, from neglectingtheir teaching duties to

playing cards during schoolhours.

With a population of3,200 (including about 800children in the 6-14 age

group), Salempur ought tohave several lively and well-equipped government

schools, with classes up tograde 8 at the very least. YetReena's school, with primary

classes only, is the onlygovernment school in thevillage. Even this primary

school is flagrantlydysfunctional, in spite of 14different visits by school

inspectors during the twelvemonths preceding thesurvey.

And it is not that thepeople of Salempur are not

keen on educating their

children. Three private

schools have sprung up inthe village, and those whocan afford it send their

children there. But childrenlike Reena come from verypoor families. They continue

to crowd the governmentprimary school -- or drop out.

4.1. Infrastructural facilitiesSchool availability

Salempur is a starkillustration of the inadequacyof the schooling

infrastructure in rural India,beginning with a lack ofschools. Note that all the

residents of Salempur belongto the population officiallycounted as living "within one

kilometre of a primaryschool" (see chapter 2), yetthe local government school

can absorb only a smallproportion of the villagechildren. Another problem

reported in several PROBE

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villages is that the local

school, though not very faras the crow flies, is difficult toreach, particularly when it

rains or (in hill areas) duringthe winter. There is also aresidual problem of absence

of primary schools in aminority of villages, mainly inremote areas. Not

surprisingly, a largeproportion of children inthese villages have never

been to school.[Box: Distant schools]

On the whole,however, the PROBE surveyconfirms that most rural

households now live at aconvenient distance from aprimary school. The main

issue, as far as schoolavailability is concerned, isthe absence of an upper-

primary school in a majorityof villages. One reason whythis is a serious problem is

that, in the PROBE states,parents are often reluctant tosend their daughters to

school outside the village. Invillages without an upper-primary school, girls often

drop out after class 5, evenwhen their parents areotherwise able and willing to

continue supporting theirstudies. Of course, theseconservative attitudes can

and do change over time, butin the short term they cannotbe ignored.

School facilities

India's schoolinfrastructure has

significantly improved during

the last ten years or so. Forinstance, if the Fifth All-IndiaEducational Survey is to be

believed, in 1986 less thanhalf of all primary schools inthe PROBE states had a

usable blackboard. Bycontrast, the PROBE surveyfound that 74 per cent of the

primary schools in thesample villages had afunctional blackboard in each

classroom. Similarly, theproportion of single-teacherschools in these states

(taken from the samesources) has declined from27 per cent in 1986 to 12 per

cent in 1996.

[Table 4.1: Positive trends]

The schoolinfrastructure, however,

remains highly inadequate.The current state of affairscan be assessed both

against official norms as wellas against the estimatedrequirements of universal

elementary education.Considering official normsfirst, the goal of Operation

Blackboard (launched in1987-8) was to ensure thatall primary schools in the

country have at least twopacca classrooms, twoteachers and essential

teaching-learning materialsuch as blackboards, maps,charts and a library (for

details, see p. ##). Few ofthe PROBE schools meetthis benchmark, and in most

cases the shortfall is serious.For instance, only 58 per

cent of the primary schools in

the sample villages had twopacca classrooms, and 12per cent had a single

teacher. Only a minority hada library (23%), maps andcharts (40%), or any usable

teaching kit (33%).

The real extent of

infrastructural shortage,however, emerges when weconsider existing facilities

against the requirements ofuniversal elementaryeducation. In the PROBE

villages, if all the childrenaged 6-10 were in primaryschool, there would be as

many as 68 pupils perteacher and 113 pupils perclassroom. The

infrastructural shortage at theupper-primary level, takinguniversal elementary

education as the yardstick, iseven more glaring.

[Table 4.2: "If all childrenwere at school"]

Main inadequacies

The inadequacies of

the school infrastructurebegin with the simplepremises where pupils,

furniture and teaching aidsare to be organised.Operation Blackboard's goal

of "at least two reasonablylarge all weather rooms" isfar from ambitious, yet it

remains unrealised in amajority of schools. Out of162 government primary

schools in the PROBEvillages:

- 3 -

[Table 4.3: State of schoolbuildings]

- Six do not have anybuilding, and are held in

open spaces.

- Several do not have a

building of their own.Instead, they occupy rentedrooms, panchayat ghars,

dharmsalas, and similarpremises. This is often

problematic, as teachingclashes with other uses ofthese premises.

- Only 58 per cent had at

least two pacca rooms.

- Nearly two-thirds have a

leaking roof. This is a majordisruption on rainy days, and

sometimes prevents anyclassroom activity for weeksat a time during the

monsoon.

- Most are in need of major

repair.

- At least 51 require a newbuilding altogether, judgingfrom the investigators'

observations and the data onneeded repairs.

[Box: "Dripping roofs,damaged walls, soggy

children"]

One reason for this

picture of dilapidation is thedismal construction standardof many schools. It is not

unusual to find that, even in a

relatively new school

building, the flooring or roofare full of holes. Among allschool buildings constructed

after 1986, 44 per cent needroof repair, 56 per cent needfloor repair, and 72 per cent

need major repair of somekind. This is not an accident.For those in charge of

construction, there is oftenmoney to be made by usingsub-standard materials and

taking other short-cuts.Another major cause ofdilapidation is poor

maintenance, on which morebelow.

The litany ofinadequacies continues aswe scrutinise basic facilities

such as classrooms,blackboards, playgrounds,teachings aids and drinking

water. Much debate ispossible about what isessential for a primary school

to function, but some minimalrequirements are easy toidentify. For instance,

drinking water is needed ifchildren are not to disappearwhen they need to drink or

wash (perhaps withoutreturning to school), and ifthey are to learn basic

hygiene. Yet, 59 per cent ofthe primary schools do nothave a functional water

supply. Similarly, toiletfacilities may seeminessential in a village

setting, but with the shrinkingof open spaces in villagesthe absence of a toilet is both

an inconvenience as well asa potential source of filth near

the school. It is also a

source of major discomfort tofemale teachers (see chapter5). Alas, 89 per cent of

primary schools in thePROBE villages lack afunctioning toilet. As for

teaching aids, there can belittle dispute that they are anessential requirement of

quality education. There is adrastic shortage of them inmost schools. The only

teaching aid available in allschools is a stick to beat thechildren.

[Table 4.4: Selected facilities]

Do schools need a

boundary wall? Again,debate is possible here butthe PROBE survey suggests

that a boundary wall helpsthe teachers in many ways,protects school property, and

reduces disruptions byoutsiders (from wanderingdrunkards to grazing

animals). Most schools donot have one.

Maintenance and utilization

Among primary

schools with a building, 78per cent had been used forpurposes other than

schooling during the 12months preceding thesurvey. However, the main

purposes were election pollsand health programmes,which have much social

value; these activities alsocontribute to the education ofchildren, perhaps more so

than the daily school routine.Leaving out those two

- 4 -

activities, 30 per cent of the

schools had been used fornon-teaching purposes, e.g.panchayat meetings and

private functions. At leastfive schools were used bythe teachers for residential

purposes (spanking newschools built with World Bankaid seem to be one of their

favourite dwellings). Othercases of gross misutilizationof school buildings included

their prolonged use as astorage space (Sarwana inUjjain, M.P.), a police camp

(Baruhi in Bhojpur, Bihar), aplace to dry cowdung cakes(Mujahidpur in

Muzaffarnagar, U.P.), a cattleshed (Belri Salehpur inHardwar, U.P.), and even a

community latrine (Kariaoti inGwalior, M.P.). But theseare extreme cases, and on

the whole the misutilization ofschool buildings turned out tobe less common than we

expected -- perhaps becausethe available facilities areminimal.

A more seriousproblem is that of poor

maintenance and utilizationof existing facilities. Giventhe scarcity of these facilities,

one might have hoped thatthey would be wellmaintained and efficiently

utilized. In fact, little effort ismade to make the most ofavailable resources, even in

schools where there are realopportunities to create acongenial school

environment. Here are someexamples:

[Box: School or sty?]

- Most school premises

range from mildlyunattractive to frankly

repulsive. Schoolrooms areallowed to degenerate intowhat can be called

storerooms, scarcelystimulating for the child, and

the area around the school isoften dirty and unpleasant.Only a few schools (notably

in Rajasthan) succeeded inmaintaining neat and

attractive premises.

- Classrooms are in short

supply, yet many classroomsremain unutilized. In schools

with a good number ofclassrooms, it is common tosee children huddled into one

or two classrooms, while theother rooms are either

unusable or used for storage,residence and other non-teaching purposes.

- In schools where teachingaids are available (e.g. those

supplied under OperationBlackboard), a standard

pattern is that these aids arelocked in trunks or cupboardsat a safe distance from the

children. The main reasonseems to be that teachers

are afraid of being blamed fortheir loss or damage. Someof them keep the teaching

aids at home, in the absenceof adequate storage facilities

at school. Also, manyteachers feel unable to usethese teaching aids, if only

because the premises are

too cramped. Only half ofthe teachers who had

functional teaching aidsreported using them duringthe 7 days preceding the

survey, and even that is likelyto involve some over-

reporting.

The problem of poor

utilization and maintenancehas nullified many of theapparent infrastructural gains

that have been made inrecent years. It also makes itdifficult to upgrade the school

environment by providingbetter furniture, teachingaids, etc. Experience shows

that a large proportion ofthese items become non-functional within a short

period of time.

Moving beyond the

physical inventory, there is awidespread failure to createa pleasant and attractive

atmosphere at school withthe means available. As themore enterprising schools

have shown, it is possible totransform the schoolenvironment through simple

devices such as keeping thepremises clean, hangingcolourful posters or maps on

the walls, and growingflowers in the surroundingarea. Initiatives of this type,

however, are sorely lacking.

4.2. Teacher Resources

Turning to the

human dimension of the

- 5 -

schooling infrastructure,

another area of concern isthe scarcity of teachers andteaching time.

Pupil-teacher ratios

Current teacherresources in rural India areway behind the official goal

of universal elementaryeducation. To appreciatethis problem, consider

teacher resources in thePROBE villages as a whole(Table 4.5). The pupil-

teacher ratio in governmentschools is defined as theratio of children enrolled to

teachers appointed at theprimary stage. Anotheruseful notion is the child-

teacher ratio, defined here asthe number of children in the6-10 age group divided by

the number of governmentteachers in primary sections.The main difference between

pupil-teacher and child-teacher ratios is that thelatter includes out-of-school

children. In other words, thechild-teacher ratio indicateshow teacher resources

compare with the number ofpotential pupils. This makessense, since the schooling

system is meant to be readyfor universal elementaryeducation.

[Table 4.5: Pupil-teacher andchild-teacher ratios]

As Table 4.5indicates, the PROBEvillages have a pupil-teacher

ratio of ##, and a child-teacher ratio of 61. Thus, if

all children were at school,

each teacher would face 61pupils on average, and ofcourse these pupils would

typically belong to severaldifferent grades. Clearly,acceptable teaching

standards would be veryhard to maintain.

This problem of highaverage child-teacher ratio iscompounded by a highly

uneven distribution ofteachers between differentschools and villages. In

principle, teaching posts aresanctioned on the basis ofactual enrolment, but the

official norms are not strictlyfollowed in practice. Also,teaching posts are often

vacant in the less attractivelocations, further enhancingthe variation in child-teacher

ratios between differentvillages. In the PROBEvillages, the child-teacher

ratio at the primary stagevaries between ## and ##.And out of 162 government

primary schools, 26 have apupil-teacher ratio above 75.

Single teachers

The problem of

teacher shortage culminatesin single-teacher schools.These have been officially

abolished, but remain quitewidespread in practice: 12per cent of all primary

schools in the PROBEvillages had a single teacherappointed. Another 21 per

cent had a single teacherpresent at the time of the

survey. Thus, one third of

the primary schools surveyed(53 schools in all) were defacto single-teacher schools

on that day. Of these 53schools, 45 had more than50 children enrolled, and

about half had more than 50children present on the dayof the survey.

[Box: "Akele hain..."]

When a singleteacher handles all fiveclasses together, sometimes

with over a hundred pupils,how does he or she managethe unmanageable? There

are many ways...

1. One class at a

time: At Sotava (Morena,M.P.), the 22-year oldshiksha karmi (auxiliary

teacher) had to tackle all of146 pupils enrolled. He hadneither pre-service nor in-

service training. His methodwas to teach one class at atime and leave the rest to

their own devices. This isalso the method employedby the teacher in Mujahipur

(Muzaffarnagar, U.P.). Shewas teaching only class 3when the PROBE team

arrived.

2.Multigrade

teaching: The teacher atChapiya Bujurg (Siwan,Bihar) taught two classes at

a time, with stick in hand.The others were in aseparate classroom, chatting.

- 6 -

3. Peer teaching:

The teacher at Syuda(Nainital district, U.P.) washappy with his own method.

He had grouped the childrenso that the older childrenwould help the younger

ones. Class 1 sat with class4 and class 2 with class 5.As no child actually knew

much, this did not exactlyresolve the problem.

4. All together, now:At Sundarpur (Allahabad,U.P.), 135 children had been

ranged neatly in lines by theteacher . The teacher atKeshavpur (Gazipur, U.P.)

had given written work tokeep the children busy.

5. The opting outoption: Unfortunately, thiswas the most common

option. At village Kodri inBahraich (U.P.), the teachergazed into the distance while

the children chatted insidethe classroom. In 30 of the53 schools with a single

teacher present, there wasabsolutely no teachingactivity going on.

[Caption: "Parents are not

interested in sending kids tosingle-teacher schools asthey know that a child won't

learn anything anyway". Ateacher in Rojabas (Ujjain,

M.P.).]Clearly, teaching-

learning activity is minimal

when a single teacher has todeal with disparate agegroups and a large number

of pupils. The casualties

include not only the children's

learning achievements butalso the teacher's moraleand the work culture.

Another problem is that,whenever the teacher isabsent, a single-teacher

school has to remain closed.Children can hardly beexpected to grasp the

importance of regular schoolattendance if the school itselfarbitrarily closes down from

time to time.

Effective teaching time

The problem ofteacher shortage is

magnified by short hours ofwork. To start with, theaverage government school

in the PROBE villages isclosed for about 12 weekseach year on account of

annual vacations, and foranother 60 days during theremaining 40 weeks on

account of Sundays andSaturdays (when mostschools have half-day

timings). That leaves 220days of potential teacherattendance, out of which 20

days or so have to bededucted for other holidaysand permitted leave; another

20 days or so for closure ofthe school during heavyrains; another 12 days or so

for "non-teaching duties"such as census- andelection-related assignments;

about 9 days (one day amonth) for collection ofsalary; and another 9 days or

so for collection anddistribution of incentives such

as food rations and free

textbooks. If anything, thisdeduction formula isconservative (e.g. it ignores

other common diversionssuch as administrative tasks,in-service training and

strikes), yet we are alreadydown to 150 days per year.Various cross-checks based

on PROBE data suggest thatthis is indeed a reasonablebenchmark. Note also that

so far our representativeteacher is not deviating fromthe bounds of duty.

On each of these150 days, a teacher is

supposed to spend about sixhours at school. But arrivinglate and leaving early is

accepted practice in mostschools, and casualabsenteeism (known to some

as "gota leave") is alsocommon. Another commonpattern is for the school to fail

to reconvene after the lunchbreak. Judging from parentaltestimonies, first-hand

observations and the surveydata, an average teacherspends something like four

hours at school on anaverage working day.

Finally, we have toconsider what ourrepresentative teacher is

actually doing during thosefour hours. This issue isdiscussed in the next section.

For the time being, we notethat the PROBE investigatorsfound at most half of the

teachers engaged in anykind of teaching activity when

- 7 -

they reached the sample

schools. This furtherreduces the effectiveteaching time to two hours a

day, for 150 days in the year,or less than one hour a dayon average over the whole

year. When this is dividedamong 46 children, itamounts to less than one

minute of individual teachingattention per pupil per dayover the whole year.

Here again, we arelooking at average figures,

and given the high variabilityof teacher resources andpractices between different

schools, many schools fall farshort of these benchmarks.An extreme case of low

teaching input arises whenthe teacher turns up once ina while for various

formalities, as has beenobserved in several villages.In Surothi (district Dhaulpur,

Rajasthan), for instance,some teachers come late (upto 1 pm), others come once a

week or so, others not at all.And in Bisariya (Ranchidistrict, Bihar), the

headmaster is not seen forweeks at a time; parentshave appointed a retired

teacher to replace him, on asalary of Rs 300 per month.Without going to these

extremes, many teachersindulge in various degrees ofsustained absenteeism. In

two-teacher schools, forinstance, it is not uncommonfor teachers to take turns in

attending. And in one third ofall the schools covered by

the PROBE survey, the

headmaster was absent atthe time of the investigators'visit.

4.3. Activity Patterns

Activity levels

One of the

objectives of the PROBEsurvey was to learnsomething about classroom

processes (on which more inchapter 6). Hence, the visitsto the sample schools were

always unannounced, andinvestigators were asked totake down detailed notes

about activity patterns at thetime of their arrival: wherethe children of different

classes were sitting, howthey kept themselves busy,what teachers were doing,

who else was around, and soon.

These notes revealwhat we see as thefundamental flaw of the

schooling system as thingsstand: a low level of teachingactivity. To begin with, in

close to half of the schoolsvisited, there was noteaching activity at all when

the investigators arrived.Even that is anunderstatement of the

problem, for three reasons.First, schools that wereclosed on the day of the

survey are not taken intoaccount here. Second, theinvestigators' visits usually

took place late in themorning, a time of peak

school activity. Third, the

term "teaching activity" isunderstood here in a verybroad sense, which includes

relatively passive methodssuch as teachers readingaloud from textbooks and

supervising written exercises.

[Table 4.6A: Teacher activity

patterns]

In schools with a

single teacher present (onethird of the primary schoolssurveyed), lack of teaching

activity is almost inevitable.The teacher's priority, in suchsituations, is to keep a

semblance of order andavoid trouble. Among 53schools in this category, thirty

had no teaching activity at all.Even in the other 23 schools,teaching activity was

minimal.

Among multi-teacher

schools, about half had atleast one teacher engaged insome kind of teaching activity

at the time of theinvestigators' visit. Otherteachers were found

occupied with a whole rangeof non-teaching activities,some loosely related to

school duties (e.g. fillingregisters and keeping an eyeon the pupils), others more in

the nature of pastimes (e.g.reading or gossiping).Liberal time-use patterns are

in danger of becomingaccepted norms in theteaching profession.

Nature of activity

- 8 -

The PROBE surveyinvolved asking class-1teachers about the teaching

methods they had used thatmorning. One fifth of themwere unable to respond as

they had not begun teaching(even though the schoolvisits took place late in the

morning). About half saidthat they had used theblackboard. However,

investigators' observationsindicate that writtenexercises are the

predominant teachingmethod. Written exercisesusually meant copying from

the blackboard, or fromtextbooks, and in somecases from guide books

(kunji). Inspection of thechildren's notebooksrevealed that exercises at

best casually checked.Some of the notebooks werefilled with meaningless

scribbles.

[Table 4.6B: Reported

teaching methods]

[Box + photograph: Maya's

notebook]

Another alarming

pattern is that class-1children tend to besystematically neglected.

This can take the form ofkeeping them idle, leavingthem to their own devices,

expecting them to learn fromtheir peers, or lumping themwith higher classes. When

teachers are unable orunwilling to teach all the

children, they typically

concentrate their efforts onthe older children. Onereason for this is that

teaching young children ismore demanding. Anotherreason, where school

examinations are takenseriously, is that teachers arekeen that class-5 children

should get good results.

Very few schools

had any activity in the natureof organised play (thoughchildren often improvised

play to kill time). Someteachers, especially thosewho had participated in

recent training programmes,were able to describe play-based teaching methods

such as "joyful learning", butdid not seem to consider thepossibility of applying these

methods in the classroom. Inone school, children werelistening spellbound to the

story of the hare and thetortoise. One teacher wasfound teaching from a map,

and another had organisedgames during the lunchbreak. But these were small

candles in a dark landscapeof minimal or nominalteaching activity.

4.4. Social discrimination

How discrimation operates

In most of thischapter and the precedingone, we have highlighted the

general problems ofschooling in rural India,

without reference to specific

sections of the population.Many of these problems,however, are vastly greater

for those who aredisadvantaged in terms ofclass, caste or gender.

In some respectsthis is obvious. Most of the

hurdles identified in the lastchapter, for instance, arelikely to be harder to

overcome in poorhouseholds: poor parentshave less money to pay for

schooling, a greater need forchild labour, less scope tocreate a learning

environment at home,greater difficulty inestablishing a rapport with

the teachers, and so on.Similarly, girls are the mainvictims of the absence of an

upper-primary school in amajority of villages.

What is less obviousis that the schooling systemitself does not give equal

treatment to differentsections of the population.Discrimination against

underprivileged groups isendemic, in several forms.

[Box: "Teer lag jaega"]

First, a system of

multiple tracks hasdeveloped, whereby differenttypes of schooling

opportunities are accessibleto different sections of thepopulation. One aspect of

this is the basic dualismbetween government schools

- 9 -

and private schools. The

latter tend to be bettermanaged, more expensive,and of course oriented to

privileged families. In somevillages (e.g. Kota ShivpratapSingh in Mirzapur, U.P.), a

peculiar form of socialapartheid has developed,whereby most dalit children

go to the government schoolwhile most high-castechildren attend private

schools. Another aspect ofthis multiple-track pattern isthe dualism between "formal"

and "informal" schoolingfacilities. The latter,consisting of various kinds of

low-cost schoolingarrangements, tend to beconcentrated in deprived

areas. While these facilitiescan be a valuablesupplement to formal schools

in these areas (e.g. toprovide some instruction todrop-out children), they often

end up as second-ratesubstitutes for real schools.

Second, there aredifferentiated facilities evenwithin the government

schooling system. Theinfrastructure of agovernment school (e.g.

number of teachers, qualityof building, range of teachingaids) tends to be far better in

privileged areas than indeprived villages. In MadhyaPradesh, for instance, the

proportion of schools with apacca building ranges from88 per cent in Indore (a

prosperous district) to 2 percent in Bastar (a tribal

district). Even in Delhi, the

quality of governmentschools varies a great dealover short distances,

depending on the socialcomposition of theneighbourhood.

[Box: Educationalbackwardness in Mewat

(Zarina Bhatty)]

Third, even within

the same school, children ofdifferent social backgroundsoften receive unequal

treatment. This includessome blatant forms ofdiscrimination, which are

supposed to belong tohistory. We found a fewschools, for instance, where

dalit children had to sitseparately from otherchildren (e.g. in village

Dubarkalan, Mirzapur), orwhere children of somecastes sat on benches while

others sat on the floor. Wealso found villages with twoadjacent government

schools, used by differentcastes. Far morewidespread than these cases

of blatant discrimination,however, are subtle forms ofunequal treatment in the

classroom.

Classroom prejudices

One commonexample of social prejudicein the classroom is the

disparaging attitude of upper-caste teachers towards dalitchildren. This can take

various forms, such as tellingdalit children that they are

"stupid", making them feel

inferior, using them formenial chores, and givingthem liberal physical

punishment. Harassmentfrom upper-caste pupils isanother common experience

of dalit children. Class-based discrimination followssimilar patterns. In one

school, the investigator notedthat new textbooks had beendistributed to children from

affluent families, while poorchildren were given oldtextbooks recycled from

previous years. Aside fromfrom affecting classroominteraction, social prejudices

and discrimination also standin the way of a cooperativerapport between parents and

teachers (more on this in thenext chapter).

[Caption: "The teachers onlyteach upper-caste children.

They use our children to doodd jobs in the school. Theydon't teach them anything.

Padhai sabke liye barabarhoni chahiye (all pupils

should be taught equally)."Ramsree, a Jatav mother inSurothi (Dholpur,

Rajasthan).]

[Caption: In Deosar (Sidhi,

M.P.), a tribal village, there isno school. Some children

attend the governmentschool in nearby Atarwan,but their parents have bitter

complaints about how theyare treated. Says one

respondent: "Our boy goes toschool, but does not learn

- 10 -

anything. The teacher is

upper-caste; if he was fromour community, he would

teach. Unka milna hisambhav nahin (evenmeeting him is impossible)."

[Box: "Social class in theclassroom" (Mohammad

Talib)]

Here again, the

problem is not confined torural areas, and it isdisturbing to find that caste

prejudices die hard even in a"modern" setting. A recentstudy highlights continuing

caste discrimination in theheart of Delhi, where someteachers go so far as to

criticize the accessibility ofgovernment schools to dalitchildren. As one of them

bluntly put it: "Scheduled-caste bacchon ko padha kekya phaida hai, unko band

baja sikha do... bass utna hithik hai. (What is the point ofteaching scheduled-caste

children? Let them learnhow to beat drums, that'sgood enough.)"

Aside from being thevictims of explicit

discrimination,underprivileged children alsosuffer from the fact that

teachers tend to concentratetheir efforts on the highergrades (e.g. classes 4 and 5

in a primary school), as wellas on the children whom theyconsider to have more

potential. These favouredpupils, more often than not,come from families that are

better able to provide a

learning environment athome.[Box: (Geeta Nambissan on

social discrimination)]

Gender bias

Gender bias isanother aspect of social

discrimination in theclassroom. For instance,boys often receive more

attention than girls from theteacher. Interviews withteachers confirm the resilient

influence of genderstereotypes, including a dimview of the abilities and

potential of female children.Interestingly, teacherperceptions of female

children were more positivein Himachal Pradesh, wheregender relations tend to be

less unequal than elsewherein north India (see chapter 9).

Another majorsource of gender bias in theclassroom is the sexist

content of the curriculum.Despite the official resolve to"eliminate sex stereotyping"

and even to achieve "a wellconceived edge in favour ofwomen" (National Policy on

Education, 1986), the schoolcurriculum continues toproject a highly conservative

view of the role of women insociety. The absence offemale teachers in many

schools (e.g. 40 per cent ofthe PROBE schools)reinforces the male-

dominated nature of theschool environment. In all

these ways, gender bias in

the classroom compoundsthe problem of unequaltreatment between boys and

girls in the family.

[Box: Gender bias in primary-

school textbooks]

4.5. Concluding Remark

In this chapter, wehave examined four essential

aspects of the schoolenvironment: the physicalinfrastructure, teacher

resources, activity patterns,and social discrimination. Oneach count, there is a deep

failure to create conditionsfavourable to qualityeducation. Aside from stifling

the growth of the child (seeChart), the unappealingnature of the school

environment fuels the"discouragement effect"discussed in chapter 3. It

also has a disempoweringeffect on teachers.

C H A P T E R F I V E

5.1. IntroductionDeep inside the bear-infested forests ofGumla district in south Bihar is a hamletcalled Baser. Tucked on a low hill, it hasonly 50 families or so, most of them adi-vasis. To the visitor, Baser looks lovelybeyond singing, but staying there takescourage. Aside from the terror unleashedby the bears, life in Baser is frugal andpublic amenities are minimal.

The hamlet has a small primary schoolwith a single teacher, a young adivasi bythe name of Sem. When he came to Baser

eight years ago, the school only had fiveor six pupils, and was held under a tree.Now most of the young children go toschool. The improvement owes a greatdeal to Sem, who patiently built a rapportwith the parents and convinced them tosend their children to school. He is acommitted teacher, and the school has alively — even happy — feel. When wevisited it, the children were listeningintently as Sem explained something tothem using the blackboard. Sem taughtin Hindi, but he was also able to com-municate with the children in their ownlanguage (Mundari), which he learnt soon

Photo

SO

ND

EE

P S

HA

NK

AR

Teachers and Society

after coming to Baser. The school buildingwas neat and tidy, with well-maintainedfurniture and teaching aids. Sem’s effortshave been actively supported by the villageeducation committee.

This heartening story points to severalinteresting lessons, all supported by thePROBE survey: the potential hardships ofteacher postings in remote areas, theviability of a formal school even in arelatively small hamlet, the importance oflanguage issues in adivasi areas, and thetransforming effects of mutual supportbetween parents and teachers, amongothers. Above all, this real-life examplegives a sense of possibility, and highlightsthe crucial role of the teacher in fulfillingthe potential of a village school. If anysingle factor can make the differencebetween a poor school and a successfulschool, it is the commitment and initiativeof the teacher.

Unfortunately, Sem’s story is quite ex-ceptional in this respect. ‘If only teacherswould teach properly’ is the desperaterefrain heard from countless parents in

the PROBE states. This widespreadproblem of teacher inertia has two inter-related roots. First, teachers work in a de-motivating environment, which saps theirmorale day after day. Second, there is adeep lack of accountability in the school-ing system. This chapter explores howthis situation has come about, as well asthe general predicament of teachers.

5.2.Village Teachers— Background andOrientation

The PROBE survey included a detailedinterview with one teacher in each school.Whoever taught class 1 was selected forinterview, and if he or she was absent,teachers of other successively higherclasses were sought. The selectedteacher was asked a range of questionsabout his or her background, training,experience, perceptions, aspirations,complaints, and so on. Unless statedotherwise, the data presented in thischapter are based on these interviews.Note also that this chapter focuses onteachers in government schools; privateschools are discussed in chapter 8.

Social background

The social background of teachers ismore diverse today than it used to be inthe past. The traditional gurujis used to

belong to the higher castes, and womenwere by and large excluded from theprofession. Today, individuals of verydiverse background (including a signi-ficant proportion of women) are found inthe teaching profession. This is a wel-come development, which partly reflectsofficial efforts to appoint more femaleteachers as well as persons from dis-advantaged castes.

Yet, within the rural society, teachersremain relatively privileged in terms ofclass, caste and gender. Taking class first,government teachers almost inevitablybelong to the more affluent sections of therural society, by virtue of their relatively highsalaries and favourable terms ofemployment. Even in terms of economicstatus prior to getting a job, it is verylikely that most teachers come from eco-nomically privileged families.

Further information on the social back-ground of teachers is presented inChart 5.1. Over half of the teachers inter-viewed belonged to Hindu communitiesoutside the SC/ST (Scheduled Castes /Scheduled Tribes) and OBC (OtherBackward Castes) categories, with eachof the latter two accounting for about 20per cent of all the teachers. In other words,the upper castes are over-representedamong teachers, while other communitiesare under-represented. The gender biasis even sharper: among all the teachersappointed in primary sections (not justthose who were interviewed), only 21 per

Below : A primary-school teacher in a

PROBE village. The teaching profession

continues to be heavily male-dominated in

rural areas.

54

AN

AL S

HA

H

cent were female. The proportion ofwomen among head teachers in primaryschools was even lower — below 10 percent. About 60 per cent of the schools didnot have a single female teacher. To putthese figures in perspective, note that theproportion of women among primary-school teachers is about two-thirds inKerala and above 80 per cent in Sri Lanka.

There is some evidence of a continuingtrend towards a more balanced com-position of the teaching profession, butthe pace of change is slow. The castebias is narrowing somewhat over time,mainly reflecting job reservation for SC/ST candidates. Several states are makingefforts to appoint more female teachers,but posting female teachers in rural areas

poses various difficulties, especially in

north India’s highly patriarchal environ-

ment (see section 5.3). The teaching

profession, therefore, continues to be

heavily male-dominated, at least in rural

areas. The class bias, if anything, has

probably grown over time, considering the

high rate of growth of teacher salaries.

IS THERE A CASE FOR FEMALE TEACHERS?

‘Female teachers pay more attention to childrenand teach with greater responsibility.’A parent in Barun (Rohtas, Bihar).

Not far from Baser is another remote village called Mayamsaur.It has a small school with a single teacher and 69 pupils. Theteacher, a young adivasi woman called Anjali, is serious andwell-organized; the children waste no time at school. Afternoting that ‘the teacher handles this difficult situation in avery impressive manner’, the investigator who visited thisschool added: ‘She walks every day on her own from Kaoli —about 45 minutes each way through the forest; she is the firstteacher who served me a glass of water herself, without askingthe children to do it; and she is the first teacher to claim thatshe often leaves the school well after the official closing time,e.g. because the premises need tidying up.’ Half of the pupilsare girls, an unusually high ratio.

Like Sem, Anjali has unusual courage and dedication. Alsounusual is to find a female teacher posted in a remote village,that too on her own. In general, female teachers are not onlyfew in number, but also heavily concentrated in the larger ormore accessible villages.

Does this lack of female teachers matter? The short answer is‘yes’, but the reasons may be a little more subtle than isgenerally assumed. For instance, we found little support forthe naive view that female teachers are far more conscientiousthan their male colleagues. Nor did parents express a clearpreference for female teachers. They were far more concernedwith the quality of teaching than with the gender of theteacher, and saw little relation between the two. Some werefrankly sceptical of female teachers, claiming for instance thatthey wasted much time gossiping or knitting.

Yet there are strong arguments in favour of female teachers:

!"!"!"!"!"Both male and female teachers felt that young children aremore comfortable with a female teacher.

‘Female teachers are irregular because of difficultworking conditions in remote areas, particularlythe inconvenience of commuting every day.’A parent from Devpura, (Mathura, U.P.)

!"!"!"!"!"In some areas, female teachers are likely to have a positive

effect on female enrolment, as seems to be happening in

Mayamsaur. In parts of Rajasthan, for instance, a significant

proportion of parents wanted their daughters to be taught by

a female teacher.

!"!"!"!"!"Female teachers are less brutal and their presence could

reduce the endemic violence in government schools.

Whenever we found a child who had dropped out after being

beaten at school, the teacher was always male.

!"!"!"!"!"The presence of female teachers at school contributes to a

balanced socialization of pupils — girls and boys. As things

stand, children in north India are brought up in a heavily male-

dominated environment, and a male-dominated school cannot

but reinforce this bias.

!"!"!"!"!"Female teachers provide much-needed role models

especially for girls. Several little girls echoed the child who

said, ‘Main madam adhyapika banna chahti hoon (I want to

be a lady teacher.’

!"!"!"!"!"Some parents pointed out that the presence of a female

teacher makes it easier for mothers to interact with teachers.

‘Female teachers can go from house to house and

talk to parents about the importance of education.

Because they are female this will be good for

both mothers and daughters.’

An adivasi parent in Baniya (Damoh, M.P.)

According to some respondents, female teachers also have

better teaching skills, due for instance to a better

understanding of child psychology. This view, however, is

more speculative, and not unanimously shared. Nor does the

survey throw much light on this matter.


55

Meanwhile, the social background ofpupils has significantly shifted in thedirection of underprivileged groups, duenot only to the massive entry of disad-vantaged children into the schoolingsystem, but also to a major shift towardsprivate schooling among privilegedfamilies. Wide differences in educationalbackground further enhance the socialdistance between teachers and theirpupils’ families. This social distance isone reason why many teachers have alimited commitment to the educationaladvancement of their pupils, as well as alimited understanding of their problems.On the positive side, Sem’s commitmentto the children of Baser illustrates thegains that are possible when a teacheridentifies with the local community.

Qualifications andtraining

Most teachers at the primary stage havestudied at least up to the completion ofsecondary school, and about two-thirdshave also received some pre-servicetraining. The most common type of pre-service training is the Basic TrainingCourse (BTC), which usually lasts twoyears. Younger teachers tend to havehigher general educational qualifications(e.g. two out of three have a BA or MA), butless pre-service training, suggesting thatgeneral education increasingly substitutesfor pre-service training. Given the doubtfulrelevance of many of the generaleducational qualifications, it is a matter ofsome concern that one-third of theteachers had no pre-service training, risingto one-half among teachers below the ageof 35.

Over half (56 per cent) of all class-1teachers have received some in-servicetraining, but the latter is a comparativelybrief affair — typically one or two short-duration courses of about ten days at atime. Well-designed training programmeswith plentiful human resources and follow-up guidance have achieved notablesuccesses. In general, however, it isobviously difficult for crash courses tohave a major impact on classroomprocesses. Most of the trained teachers

ON TRAINING TO BE A TEACHER

Chances are high that many teachers in our country have not had the benefit of agood pre-service training for their job. For most candidates who wish to beteachers, there is an acute dearth of good teacher-training facilities and the qualityof training programmes offered in the country is varied. To overcome this problemthe NCTE (National Council of Teacher Education) has recently been set up withthe aim of ensuring adequate standards in all teacher-training institutes.

Another problem is the content of the training course. For one thing, the contentof the pre-service courses has not kept pace with changes in the field. Secondly, itis assumed that the higher a teacher’s formal qualifications, the more suitable he orshe is for the job. Thus, a BA would be preferred over a class-12 candidate with aBTC. Again, if there was a tussle between a BA BEd and an MA BEd then thelatter would automatically be taken. Ironically, neither the BA nor the MA has anyspecial relevance to young children, and the BEd is really a pre-service training forsecondary school teaching. Only very recently has the BElemEd been introducedas a pilot project specially geared to the pre-service training of teachers to teach uptill class-8 level.

One modality for addressing the problem of teacher training was through thesetting up of DIETs (District Institutes of Education and Training), which are meantto provide contextualized teacher training at the district level. Since the DIET doesnot have its own cadre, it is often staffed with people from administrative jobs inthe field. But they are unhappy with being sidelined in the DIETs and often wishto be back in the field. At the same time the constant transfers create their ownproblems of lack of a permanent stake. Primary-school teachers with years ofexperience are not considered eligible for appointment at DIETs because thesystem is too rigid to equate their experience with the required academicqualifications, or allow them space to acquire these qualifications.

The DIETs also generally fail to give hands-on training. They were meant to workwith local schools and develop them as models where good teaching could bedemonstrated — a kind of lab area as it were. Instead, the trainees are assigned toany schools in the vicinity. The regular teachers consider them as substituteteachers. There is no demonstration of good model teaching. Reality is givenshort shrift. Everything is geared to the sacred lesson plan.

In-service training of government-school teachers is more in line with currentdevelopments in the field as well as with the ground realities faced by thegovernment-school teacher. For example, it has modules on multi-grade teaching.Teachers in tribal schools are also given special training. Unfortunately, thoughmore teachers are being trained than ever before, there are many problems. In-service training is too short to impact teaching methods. Again, it cuts intoteaching time — teachers are not willing to come after school or during vacations.The growing reliance on low-cost para-teachers has led to further erosion ofteacher competence, already a major problem in, say, the teaching of mathematics.While it is claimed that para-teachers are as effective as regular teachers or evenmore so, this, if true, is mainly a reflection of the higher level of accountabilityamong para-teachers (who have no job security). The experience of para-teachersdoes not detract from the need for concern about teacher preparedness andtraining.

Venita Kaul.


56

considered these courses ‘useful’, mainlyin terms of gaining exposure to newteaching methods. But many added thatit was hard to put the new principles inpractice, if only because of the difficultclassroom situation and poor infra-structure. Indeed, we found little evidenceof in-service training having a practicalimpact on classroom processes. Manyteachers had been trained to use theOperation Blackboard teaching kits, butteaching aids (whether from OperationBlackboard or any other) were seldom tobe seen in the classrooms. Similarly,though special training for teachingclass-1 children had been given to manyteachers, class 1 was usually left to itsown devices, or lumped together withother classes when teaching activity wasin progress. In some cases, the newmethods were judged frankly unrealisticby the teachers. One of them wryly com-mented that the innovative ‘shabd gyanse akshar gyan’ method (i.e. learningwords before learning letters) sounded tohim like trying to climb a ladder from thetop. Another teacher vividly described howhe had been taught to make mango pickle,but when we asked him whether he hadever done it at school, he dismissed thisnaive idea, pointing out that the school hadneither stove nor fuel nor utensils normangoes.

Further, training programmes providelittle space for enabling teachers to benefitfrom the insights which their peers havepicked up from their own classroompractices — even teachers with limitedformal qualifications often develop out-standing pedagogical skills through longyears of experience. Opportunities forfocused peer interaction would enrich andmotivate teachers and also reduce therural teacher’s sense of isolation.

Ethics and attitudes

The female teacher in Bariyahi (Saharsa,Bihar) lives in the village and said that sheinteracted with the parents, especially thewomen. She keeps conveying to theminformation about nutrition, employment,loans and other such issues. When a newgovernment scheme is announced, sheis quick to bring it to the attention of thecommunity. In this case the teacherperceived her role as extending beyondthe classroom to the welfare of thecommunity, and indeed the rural teachercould play a lead role in showing howeducation improves the quality of life.

This positive attitude, however, is un-common. Instead, most teachers conveya deep lack of commitment to the

promotion of education in the localcommunity, a pattern which relates to theissue of social distance mentioned earlier.They also perceive a lack of power amongdisadvantaged parents and this perhapsenables them to disregard theiraspirations.

‘If you ask the teacher, ‘Why didn’tyou come for four days?’, he will say,‘I was cutting the bajra.’ And these

teachers don’t have smalllandholdings — more like 100 bighas.’

A villager from Surothi(Dholpur, Rajasthan), who lives next to

the local school.

Perhaps one crucial issue then is theteacher’s perception of his or her role (ajob or a vocation), and another is the setof attitudes which he or she brings to thisfunction as role model for young children.Few teachers see their work as a voca-tion. In rural areas, teaching posts tend tobe seen as plum jobs, with good salaries,secure employment and plenty of time forother activities. Anyone with the requiredformal qualifications may be tempted toapply, including persons who have nointrinsic attraction to the job, no sympathyfor children, or no commitment to thespread of education. Teacher selectionfocuses on academic qualifications and,in some states, has been further devaluedby rampant corruption in the appointmentprocess. In short, many recruits are un-likely to have a special aptitude or motiv-ation for teaching.

One can go further and state that, asidefrom attracting poorly-motivated indi-viduals, the teaching profession may bedeterring those who have a genuineattraction to teaching as a pedagogicalor social endeavour. The school environ-ment being what it is (see chapter 4), aperson with such a vocation may feel thatgovernment schools in rural areas provideno scope for his or her skills to flourish.Private schools, or other professions, maylook more attractive.

Having said this, the main issue may notbe the low initial motivation of teachers as

An in-service training program : but the survey found little evidence of the

impact of this training on classroom processes.


57

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the fact that many of them lose theirmotivation over time. Indeed, amongrecently-appointed teachers we often metpeople with genuine enthusiasm. Thehoneymoon, however, is usually short-lived, as the morale of young teachers isbattered day after day. The battering takesa variety of forms, examined in the nextsection.

5.3. Teachers’Concerns

Poor infrastructure

Such are the working conditions in villageschools that most teachers, of necessity,would find them tough, and even the mostcommitted teacher could find his or herenthusiasm waning. Interestingly, a largemajority of teachers declare being ‘satis-fied’ with their salary (68 per cent) andleave entitlements (86 per cent). However,teachers do have many concerns of otherkinds.

The most common complaint is thatschools are under-equipped, under-funded, under-staffed and over-crowded.Poor infrastructural facilities were men-tioned by 63 per cent of the teachers asone of the problems they face. This issuehas been dealt with in some detail in the

the fees, and generally fail to watch theirchildren’s needs and progress. Asteachers perceive it, their own efforts tokeep the children at school are notreciprocated by the parents.

What especially discourages well-meaning teachers is the failure of manyparents to participate in the schoolingendeavour. For instance, efforts to set upa PTA (parent-teacher association) areoften undermined by poor attendance atmeetings. In some villages, teachersclaim that even vigorous enrolment drivesevoke little response. Sometimes parentsare openly resentful of demands made bythe school: one teacher in an urban muni-cipal school quoted an irate parent assaying, ‘Aap baar baar hamein bulatehain jaise aap prime minister ho. Hameinyeh chik chik baji achhi nahin lagti hai.(You keep calling us again and again as ifyou were the prime minister. We don’t likethis nagging.)’

Lack of parental support can even takethe extreme form of irresponsible orobstructive behaviour. In Hutup (Ranchi,Bihar), drunkenness is rampant andteachers even accuse parents of stealingrice meant for mid-day meals to buy liquor.The headmistress feels that the village is‘useless’, and incapable of improving. InBasaura (Kanpur district, U.P.), teachersare wild with the villagers for keeping

preceding chapter, and there is no needto cover that ground again.

Parental apathy

Teachers are often frustrated by theapathy of parents towards their children’seducation. They complain that parents donot send their children to school regularly,or withdraw them for flimsy reasons. Theyalso see much foot-dragging even whenchildren are at school: parents send themlate and in tattered clothes, try to dodge

cartoon


58

TEACHING IN A GOVERNMENT SCHOOL

Access to education in India is sharply skewed, even at theprimary level. At one end are the resource-rich, mainly privateschools that cater to a privileged few. At the other are a largenumber of ill-equipped and badly-managed governmentschools, which are supposed to educate the majority ofchildren. The contrast between these two schooling systemsis so stark that they are virtually different worlds altogether.

Having taught in an elite ‘public school’ in Delhi beforemoving to a government-administered girls’ school in aresettlement colony (also in Delhi), I have realized that thetwo worlds, so to speak, are separated not merely bydifferences of resources but also in more fundamental ways.While the elite public school I taught in attempts to engagewith the educational aspirations of its privileged clientele, theresettlement-colony school further debilitates any creativeenergies of its overwhelmingly lower-class and lower-castestudents. In effect, education in the latter school is not ameans of liberating children from the clutches of poverty andignorance, but a way of reinforcing their destitution anddefeated mindsets.

A majority of children in the resettlement school come frompoor families. Their parents’ occupations range from casuallabour and rickshaw-pulling to street-vending and peon-typejobs in government offices. The children are undernourished,live in dingy hovels, carry the burden of household choresand have no access to any social support for theireducational aspirations. Given their depressed environmentand socio-economic handicaps, these children should havebeen entitled to special care and attention. The reverse,however, is true.

The resettlement school is ill-maintained. Toilets are non-functional: 1,500 students and 70 members of staff share onedefective toilet. Electricity supply is erratic at best. Duringthe summer, weeks often go by without any electricity, andeven water is not available as the water pumps cannot work.Classrooms are poorly ventilated, that is, when a classroom isavailable at all. A large number of classes have to beconducted in makeshift corridors or spaces. When theweather precludes teaching in open spaces, two classes arepacked into one room. This leads to an absurd situationwhere one teacher is trying to impart, say, the principles ofgeometry in one corner while students in another corner aremuddling through a lesson in social science. Students haveno desks and make do by balancing their books on their laps.Add to this the stench of the one toilet pervading the wholeschool, filth everywhere and mounds of dust. Thus thestudents make no transition from their oppressive poverty athome.

The curriculum, for its part, is drastically at variance with thelife these children live. By focusing on upper-middle classexperiences, it further alienates them from the world ofknowledge. They are simply unable to relate to the finersubtleties of birthday parties, balanced diets, family holidaysor multi-storeyed homes. Being a teacher of English, I havecome to realize that the curriculum is utterly incomprehensibleto these underprivileged children.

Besides, much teaching is conducted in an abusive andcallous manner. There is a tangible, even if unintended,process of eroding the children’s self-esteem, dignity andrespect. For these children, the school does not open up anew world of learning and knowledge; instead, it reproducesthe destitute physical and psychological environment in whichthey live.

When I took up the job, I sincerely believed that individualeffort would bear fruit even in a government school. Now Irealize that the perpetuation of the status quo depends on thesystem’s ability to break down dissenting voices. The latitudefor initiative and creativity is very limited.

For instance, I tried to engage the children with low-costteaching aids and story books. But there were no shelves orstorage space in the classrooms, and when charts or displayswere left behind, they didn’t survive the second shift. Thus tothe lack of essential items such as chalk (which I have to buyfrom my own pocket) has been added the almost completeabsence of basic teaching aids. Teaching therefore becomestransitory, with no ideas developing through the benefit ofcontextuality or familiarity.

Also frustrating is the absolute focus on getting the studentsto pass the exams, and that too only through rote learning. Ateacher’s performance is judged only by the pass percentageof his or her students. Efforts to promote the joy of learning orthe pupils’ understanding are not recognized as an act ofteaching. Inevitably I am boxed into the position ofconcentrating on the syllabus, which furthermore has to behammered across all students in a class regardless of theirdiffering abilities and learning speeds. The limitations of time,an exam-centred approach and the failure of the system toaddress the special needs of disadvantaged students meanthat they get marginalized. Willy-nilly, I find myselfcontributing to this process. It is truly debilitating to have toteach a class knowing that a substantial section is beingfurther distanced from education. In effect I am compelled toreinforce the inequities of the system.

Snehlata Gupta


59

animals tied in classrooms, wrecking theschool building, stealing school material,and even ploughing the compound.Rivalling with them are villagers inPachlavra (Hoshangabad, M.P.), led by thesarpanch, who are said to have looted theschool building, leaving nothing behindexcept obscene graffiti.

Difficult pupils

Adding to parental apathy is the fact thatchildren themselves are difficult to handle.In many families, the home environmentis not conducive to studies, making theteacher’s task all the more difficult. Someteachers commented on the exhaustingtask of beginning all over again after everyvacation in the absence of any follow-upat home. Many children are first-generation learners, armed with just onealphabet text and one slate. Furtherlearning difficulties arise from mal-nutrition, poor health, irregular attendance,and the burden of household work. Someteachers take the view that a substantialproportion of their pupils are simplyunteachable.

Paralysing curriculum

The school curriculum which teachersare expected to cover is highly demandingfor most young children. For instance,according to recent guidelines (readinstructions) on ‘minimum levels oflearning’, every class-5 pupil is expectedto master not only the three Rs but alsosubjects as diverse as ‘the progress ofman from early times to the present age’,‘the relationship between the Central,State and local-self governments’, and‘the present schemes (a few) to increaseand improve forest cover, cleaning rivers,tanks and such others’. To make thingsworse, these subjects are often presentedin an abstruse or alienating manner in thetextbooks (see chapter 6).

The school curriculum is all the morechallenging for underprivileged childrenwhose learning potential is oftendiminished by undernourishment,exhaustion from physical work, and theabsence of a learning environment athome. It is not surprising that teachers

who have to impart an unrealistic cur-riculum to such children often feel that thebattle is lost from the start. The temptation,in such a situation, may well be to give upaltogether, rather than focus on helpingchildren to learn at a more gentle pace.

Unwanted postings

Many teachers are anxious to avoidbeing posted in remote or ‘backward’villages. One practical reason is the incon-venience of commuting, or of living in aremote village with poor facilities. (Thereis no compensation for remote postings;on the contrary, teachers receive higherliving allowances when they are posted inurban areas.) Another common reasonis alienation from the local residents, whoare sometimes said to be squanderingtheir money on liquor, to have no potentialfor education, or simply to ‘behave like

monkeys’. Remote or backward areas arealso seen as infertile ground for ateacher’s efforts. Said a primary-schoolteacher in Heda Khan (Nainital district,U.P.):

Parents here do not even see toit that their children are clean.They have very hard lives.Men do little, mainly porter’s work.Women do all the forest work.Most of the children cometo school hungry. They don’treach home till 4 p.m. Somewalk for upto an hour to getto the school in good weather,more during the monsoon.In other areas, we couldtake tuitions. Here the parentsare too poor. I found morejob satisfaction teachingin a private school for alower salary because ofthe good learning environmentcreated by the management.


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Tougher to

teach:

many pupils

are first-

generation

learners

armed with

one alphabet

text and one

slate.

Unwanted postings and arbitrary

transfers are seen as a constant threat.Teachers spend a great deal of time andenergy trying to avoid undesirable trans-

fers, lobbying for preferred postings, andbuilding up influential connections to playthe transfer game. This syndrome has be-

come a major diversion in the teachingprofession.

Excessive paperwork

Several teachers complained about thepressure of administrative chores, fromfilling numerous registers to writing

reports and keeping accounts. In areaswhere schools are grouped in ‘clusters’,with one school acting as the nodal school

for the cluster, the administrative burdenon this nodal school is often substantial.Elsewhere, too, the PROBE investigators

often found that one or more teacherswere busy with administration duringschool hours. The administrative burden

seems to be expanding over time, notablydue to the growing importance of variousincentive schemes for pupils. Teachers

also have to deal with other kinds of ‘non-teaching duties’, all of which are potentialdiversions from teaching.

Unsupportive management

The school management structure is notgeared to supporting the efforts of aresponsible teacher. To start with, it often

fails in its role of removing the simpleobstacles in the teacher’s path. Theprovision of textbooks and teaching aids,

for instance, is inadequate and hap-hazard. Teachers routinely receive thewrong textbooks (if any), or get them at the

end of the year, or find themselves withhalf as many textbooks as there are pupils.In some cases, the management

structure even becomes a source ofharassment. Inspectors, for instance,often expect monetary inducements —

one anxious teacher volunteered a bribeas soon as the PROBE investigatorsturned up.

DISTRACTING DUTIES

The burden of ‘non-teaching duties’ is often cited as a major reason why teachersare unable to concentrate on teaching. Examples of such duties (other than schooladministration) include helping with the decennial census, the cattle census, anti-poverty schemes, health programmes, literacy campaigns and vote counting.While some of these duties have much social value, the diversion of teaching timeis a serious matter. How real is the problem?

Few of the class-1 teachers interviewed as part of the PROBE surveyspontaneously mentioned non-teaching duties as one of their major problems. Alittle over two-thirds had not spent a single day in non-teaching duties during theprevious four weeks. And the average number of days spent in non-teachingduties in that period was only two. However, a closer look at the facts showsreason for concern. One-sixth of the class-1 teachers had spent at least three daysin non-teaching duties during the previous four weeks, and the proportion maywell be higher for headteachers. In single-teacher schools, non-teaching dutiesmean that the school has to be closed. One teacher in Kurashna (Dewas, M.P.)reported that his school had been closed for as many as 27 days over the year onaccount of the following non-teaching duties: health programmes (four days),IRDP survey (seven days), illiteracy survey (seven days), monthly distribution offood rations to pupils (nine days). Perhaps the greatest danger of non-teachingduties is the message they might convey to the teacher: that teaching is not apriority.


61

The BDO (Block Development Officer)at Alwar, Rajasthan gave a revealingexample of the attitude of governmentofficers to the teacher’s task. On beingtold that there is a break in continuity

for children when a teacher is called upfor livestock census, literacy work andso on, the BDO ‘reiterated the popularperception that primary school classescan be taught by any teacher as there isno specialization or expertise requiredto teach small children. Also teacherscan easily substitute for each other.’

(Geetha Nambissan, 1997).

Further, a responsible teacher gets norecognition for his or her efforts. Asteachers see it, the quality of teaching isthe least of all the concerns of theirsuperiors. The main focus is on schoolrecords, enrolment figures, incentiveschemes, and other administrativematters. In line with this lack of concernfor the quality of teaching, the manage-ment structure has allowed teachers tobecome multi-purpose agents who aremobilized from a variety of quarters.Inspectors expect them to completevarious administrative tasks, involving themaintenance of numerous registers.Government departments use them for allkinds of non-teaching duties. Partyleaders strive to use them as politicalagents. Conscientious teaching is theleast prominent and the most thanklessof the activities they are expected toperform.

5.4. AccountabilityIssues

The accountabilityproblem

Given the disempowering environmentin which they work, it is not surprising thatteachers find it hard to maintain decentschooling standards. All good teaching

WHY PROBE SCHOOLS HAD FEW FEMALE TEACHERS

The school at Murkhudiya (Nainital, U.P.) had only one teacher. A second teacher

had been appointed as headmistress but had not taken up her post. Her brother

had come to the school once — to survey the area and help his sister to change

her posting on the grounds that life in a remote hill village was too exacting for an

elderly woman. The headmistress’s reluctance is not uncommon. Female teachers,

old or young, are loath to take up posts in rural areas, and especially in remote

villages. These areas are problematic for women for many reasons.

For one thing, it is tough for women teachers to find residential accommodation

and live alone in a rural area, because of inadequate facilities and lack of safety

(real or perceived). In Singapatti (Mathura district, U.P.), there have been several

recent cases of molestation and sexual harassment of female teachers. The female

teacher at Neri (Sultanpur district, U.P.) was reluctant to stay in the village in the

quarters available to her as she was afraid of goondas. Commuting is sometimes a

possibility but it has its own drawbacks, from inconvenience to time waste and

physical insecurity.

Patriarchal norms enhance the problem. The family of a young, unmarried female

teacher in north India would hesitate to let her to take up a rural posting. If the

teacher is married, then she would be expected to live where her husband has

employment rather than the other way around. Married teachers also have to face

the double burden of teaching and household work.

The stress of patriarchal norms extends even to the school premises. Aside from

occasional sexual harassment, female teachers are widely treated as second-class

employees by their male colleagues. In several cases, the female teacher was

bossed around by junior male teachers, e.g. asked to make tea while they talked

with the PROBE investigators. Female teachers were almost invariably expected to

fetch the registers, irrespective of their formal status. In one school, the

headmaster had no knowledge of what was happening in the school; the questions

had to be answered by the female teacher, who was obviously doing all the work.

In Gingla (Udaipur, Rajasthan), the four male teachers sat on chairs talking to the

PROBE investigators while the female teacher, who was pregnant, stood behind

them with her face veiled.

A special problem for female teachers is the absence of toilet facilities. And this

problem is not confined to rural areas. One female teacher posted in Delhi gave us

a harrowing account of the torture she endures in the summer, when she has to

abstain from drinking even a cup of tea during school hours, for want of toilet

facilities. This is a telling illustration of the lack of sensitivity of the schooling

system to the needs of female teachers.


62

requires enormous reserves of spirit, andwhen dealing with young children, evenconsiderable physical energy. A teachertrapped in a ramshackle village school,surrounded by disgruntled parents, irregu-lar pupils and overbearing inspectors, canhardly be expected to work with anyenthusiasm.

Yet, the deterioration of teachingstandards has gone much too far to beexplained by the disempowerment factoralone. The PROBE survey came acrossmany instances where an element of plainnegligence was also involved. Theseinclude several cases of irresponsibleteachers keeping a school closed or non-functional for months at a time; a schoolwhere the teacher was drunk, while onlyone-sixth of the children enrolled werepresent; other drunk teachers, some ofwhom expect pupils to bring them daru; aheadteacher who asks the children to dodomestic chores, including looking afterthe baby; several cases of teacherssleeping at school; a husband-wife teamwho took turns in coming to school; aheadteacher who comes to school oncea week; another headteacher who did notknow the name of a single child in theschool; and so on down the line. We alsonote in passing that, during the selectionof investigators for the PROBE survey, no

less than three government primary-school teachers offered their services, inthe middle of the school year, for threemonths at a stretch.

These extreme cases, however, areperhaps less devastating than the quietinertia of the majority of teachers who keepan appearance of dignity. As we saw inchapter 4, in half of the sample schoolsthere was no teaching activity at the timeof the investigators’ visit. It is significantthat this pattern occurred even in caseswhere the school infrastructure (in termsof number of classrooms, teaching aidsand even teacher-pupil ratio) was rela-tively good. Inactive teachers were foundengaged in a variety of pastimes such assipping tea, reading comics or eatingpeanuts, when they were not just sittingidle. Generally, teaching activity has beenreduced to a minimum, in terms of bothtime and effort. And this pattern is notconfined to a minority of irresponsibleteachers — it has become a way of life inthe profession.

There are also positive examples of thefact that, to some extent, teachers canimprove teaching standards even withinthe existing environment. The shiningaccomplishments of committed teacherssuch as Sem and Anjali (and many others)

DUTY CALLS — BUTFAINTLY

When the investigators reached theprimary school in Jotri Peepal(Bharatpur, Rajasthan) shortly afternoon, no teacher was in sight. Oneteacher, who had apparently left forlunch, soon appeared. He said thatthe school actually had threeteachers, but that the headmasterand another teacher had goneelsewhere on official duty.

The villagers contradicted thisstory. They said that the twoabsconding teachers did not turn upat all. The only one who did wasthe one the investigators had met, a‘10th pass’ shiksha karmi. He toowas highly irregular and opened theschool at will.

Jotri Peepal is a remote village,never visited by inspectors. It isalso a very poor village inhabitedmainly by the Muslim Meos. Thepeople are keen on education,though they would like to haveUrdu as one of the subjects taught.The teachers, for their part, seem tohave little regard for theseaspirations. Even the shiksha karmifelt that there was no point ineducating the children ofagricultural labourers in this isolatedvillage.

Right :

In half of the

sample schools,

there was no

teaching activity

at the time of the

investigators’ visit.


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AL S

HA

H

illustrate this point. It is also worth notingthat, by all accounts, teaching standardsused to be higher in the past, when workconditions were — in many respects —even more challenging than they are today.Another illustration is the high level ofteaching activity in private schools, evenmakeshift ones where the work environ-ment is no better than in governmentschools (see chapter 8).

This feature of private schools brings outthe key role of accountability in theschooling system. In a private school, theteachers are accountable to the manager(who can fire them), and, through him orher, to the parents (who can withdraw theirchildren). In a government school, thechain of accountability is much weaker,as teachers have a permanent job withsalaries and promotions unrelated toperformance. This contrast is perceivedwith crystal clarity by the vast majority ofparents.

We are not making a case here forprivate schools, which have their ownproblems (see chapter 8). Nor are wearguing against job security, which is astandard feature of the teaching pro-fession in many countries. The point isthat accountability mechanisms of somekind are essential to protect the workculture of the teaching profession. Seenin that light, it is also clear that account-ability need not be an ‘anti-teacher’concern — teachers themselves have astake in the integrity of their profession. Inthis connection, it is interesting to note thata majority of teachers find inspections‘helpful’ (despite the absence of anyfollow-up action on their complaints),mainly as a means of ‘enhancing teacherattendance’.

To conclude, improved teachingstandards depend on two essentialsteps: a more supportive work environ-ment, and enhanced accountability.Focusing on accountability alone wouldbe missing a large part of the context ofteacher inertia, just as it would be naive toexpect a better environment alone totransform teaching standards. The twomeasures are best seen as comple-mentary and mutually reinforcing.

Whither accountability?

Ensuring teacher accountability is not aneasy task. For one thing, a teacher’sperformance is difficult to observe: his orher work has no clear-cut ‘output’, thoughsome indirect indications of teachingstandards can be obtained from spot-check inspections, pupil’s exam scores,and so on. For another, there is no obviousway of linking performance (if observed)with a fair and effective system of rewardsand sanctions. These features are by nomeans unique to the teaching profession,but this is a case where they are fairlyprominent.

‘Target-chasing is simply the wrong wayto handle teachers. Take the MLL

approach — at first all teachers weresupposed to achieve 80/80 results i.e. 80per cent of the children were supposed

to have achieved 80 per centcompetence level. When the teachers

were asked what competence level hadbeen achieved by 80 per cent of thestudents, they invariably answered

“eighty”. Later this demand was felt tobe unrealistic so the competence levelwas changed to 60 per cent. Now when

the teachers were asked whatcompetence level had been achieved

they answered — “sixty”.’

Venita Kaul, NCERT.

In practice, what tends to happen is thatteacher accountability derives from avariety of formal and informal incentives.Each of these incentives tends to be quiteimperfect on its own, but together they cango a long way towards protecting the workculture. Promotion opportunities, for in-stance, can be a useful way of en-couraging teachers to do their best. In amore disciplinarian vein, sanctions suchas transfers may help to contain chronicabsenteeism and related practices.Within the school, the authority of theheadteacher plays a similar role, withvarying effects depending on theheadteacher’s own commitment and hisor her rapport with the teachers. Peerpressure is an example of informal

incentive within the school: while teachersmay not be keen to exert themselves, theyhave an interest in preventing otherteachers from shirking (because itincreases their own work-load). Anotherimportant incentive derives from ateacher’s concern for his or her reputationin the village community. The strength ofthis reputation effect, however, dependson whether the teacher identifies with thelocal community, and on the extent towhich parents understand what goes onin the classroom. Last but not least, theremay be some community accountability,building on institutions such as parent-teacher associations, the village pancha-yat and informal channels of interactionbetween teachers and the community.

The details of the accountability processare hard to identify, even from the PROBEsurvey. This is a subject on which furtherresearch would be most useful. Mean-while, what is clear is that most of thepotential incentives have lost their sharpedge. This, in turn, is due to a combinationof managerial irresponsibility andorganized resistance on the part of theteaching profession. To illustrate, consi-der the issue of promotions. In moststates, teacher promotions are entirelyseniority-based, making them uselessas incentive devices. Teachers’ organ-izations have tended to press for seniority-based promotion, but this demand, inturn, has to be undertood in the light of theabuses to which a system of discretionarypromotions lends itself. When promotionsare (supposedly) based on a teacher’srecord, what often happens in practice isthat they are used to reward political loyaltyor personal favours. It is understandablethat teachers want to protect themselvesfrom arbitrary treatment.

Another important example concernsexaminations. Notwithstanding their flawsas a method of evaluating pupils (seechapter 6), school examinations giveparents important information about theperformance of teachers. For instance, ifall the pupils in a school fail the Boardexam in class 5, parents are likely to askpointed questions about what theteachers were doing in the classroom.Knowing this, teachers have an incentiveto ensure that children do reasonably well


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in the exams. However, automaticpromotion of children until class 8 or evenclass 10 has become an acceptedpractice in many states, and so is masscopying when exams do take place. Hereagain, teachers’ organizations haveplayed a part in dismantling the exam-ination system, yet their outlook has to beseen in the light of the paralysing burdenplaced on them by current examinationprocedures (see chapter 6).

Similar contradictions have underminedother accountability mechanisms. Haltingthe erosion of teacher accountability callsinter alia for a new rapport betweenteachers’ organizations and the educationadministration, based on a shared com-mitment to universal elementary edu-cation. Another important step is toimprove the framework of teacher-parentinteraction, which may well be the mostpromising basis of accountability in theschooling system.

5.5. Teachers andthe VillageCommunity

In the preceding sections, we identifiedtwo causes of teacher inertia: a demotiv-ating environment, and lack of account-ability. In both respects, a cooperativerapport between teachers and parents(and the village community in general) canhelp a great deal. Going beyond that,education is intrinsically a joint task ofparents and teachers, in so far as a childacquires education not only at school butalso at home. It is all the more importantthat the efforts of teachers and parentsshould complement rather than under-mine each other.

Patterns of teacher-parent relations

Parents and teachers have a tendency toblame each other for the failures of theschooling system. This situation maysound like the death-knell of teacher-parent relations. However, some mutualcriticism is quite natural in this context,

and does not necessarily rule out practicalcooperation. In fact, given the current stateof affairs, it would be quite worrying ifparents were full of praise for teachers orvice versa. Their respective demands dohave a positive role to play in theimprovement of the schooling system.The real problem is not that peoplecomplain, but that private grumbles fail totranslate into constructive action.

The nature of teacher-parent relationsvaries a great deal between differentvillages. In a minority of villages, there isactive cooperation. In Khurd (Dholpur,Rajasthan), for instance, the teacher haswon the appreciation of the village com-munity for his punctuality and sense of duty,setting in motion a virtuous circle of goodwill. At the other extreme, there are cases

of palpable tension between teachers andthe parental community. This applies inBisariya (Ranchi, Bihar), where parentsended up appointing a retired teacher tohelp in the local school, deserted by itsown headteacher. Antagonism is also thenorm with non-functional schools, whichreflect a fundamental breakdown of theteacher-parent relation. An intermediatepattern arises when teachers are identi-fied with specific factions within the village.This is particularly frequent in villages withsharp divisions of caste and class. Therapport between teachers and the sar-panch often plays a crucial role in factionalalignments.

Perhaps the most common pattern is oneof scant interaction between parents andteachers. Parents, even if unhappy, see

ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS AND THEIR WEAKNESSES

Examples of Why they are quite weak in practiceaccountabilitymechanisms

Teacher promotions - Promotions are seniority-based- Difficult to assess teachers in a fair and

objective manner

Transfers and - Unwanted transfers are resistedother sanctions by teachers’ organizations

Inspection system - Lack of follow-up (see chapter 7)

Supervision by - Headteacher post in primary schoolsthe headteacher effectively abolished in many states

- Headteacher often not in control of the teachers

Teacher concern - Due to social distance fromfor reputation parental community, teacher may not

be too concerned

Peer pressure - Corroded work culture- Collusion among teachers

Community - Parents have little poweraccountability - Over-centralized administration

- Inspectors don’t consult parents- Parents may find it difficult to judge what goes

on at school


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little scope to influence the teachers. Thelatter, for their part, have limited interest inactive interaction with parents, or may besatisfied with selective interaction. Two-thirds of the headteachers we interviewedfelt that the attitude of parents towards theschool was ‘helpful’, but what theyunderstood by this reflected lowexpectations of parental cooperation:asked to elaborate, the most frequentcomment was that parents helped bysending their children to school regularly.Less than 30 per cent of the headteachersreported that they had asked for anyspecific help from the parents during thepreceding 12 months and obtained a‘favourable’ response. On both sides,inertia is the dominant attitude.

Formal participatoryinstitutions

I t is partly to tackle this problem ofcollective inertia that efforts have beenmade to set up formal institutions aimedat promoting greater interaction betweenteachers and parents. Two examples are‘parent-teacher associations’ (PTAs) and‘village education committees’ (VECs).The PROBE survey, however, suggeststhat these institutions are themselvesquite dormant. Less than one-fifth of theschools surveyed had a PTA. And eventhe PTAs that did exist seldom wentbeyond formalities. Some met only on 15August and 26 January for snacks or abrief celebration, following an earliertradition of inviting parents to the localschool on those days.

Village education committees are doingonly a little better. About half of the sampleschools belonged to a village with afunctional VEC, ‘functional’ beingunderstood in the liberal sense that theVEC had met at least once during thepreceding 12 months. We found somecases of active VECs, as in Jamnagari(Betul, M.P.), where the VEC helped thelocal teacher to do a literacy survey, and ina few other villages where the VECseemed to perform some usefulsupervisory function. In areas where VECsare set up in the context of a broader andwell-rehearsed effort to improve theschooling system, such as the LokJumbish programme in parts ofRajasthan (see chapter 8), they seem totake off. By and large, however, VECsseem to be token institutions, with neitherteachers nor parents expecting much fromthem. As with PTAs, a large proportion ofVECs were found to be meeting mainlyon Independence Day and Republic Day,even though they are supposed to holdregular meetings. One reason for this lackof dynamism seems to be that thesecommittees were formed in a top-downmanner, based on government directivesrather than any felt need of the community.As one teacher bluntly put it, ‘VEC bolo,PTA bolo, jo sarkar ka hukum hai, vo humkarte hain (call it the VEC, call it the PTA,we follow whatever orders the governmentgives us).’

Another potential tool of parent-teachercooperation is the village panchayat. Inmany villages, however, the functioning ofthe village panchayat is far fromdemocratic, with the sarpanch takingmost of the decisions. This means thatpopular aspirations may be poorlyrepresented in the village panchayat, andmatter much less than the personalrapport between sarpanch and teacher.The latter shows interesting variationsbetween different villages. There are manycases of collusion between teacher andsarpanch, both of whom hold positionsof local influence and power. Even casesof teacher-sarpanch collusion at theexpense of the village community arenot uncommon. In Mohangarh Bhata(Tikamgarh, M.P.), for instance, the duostrikes fear in the hearts of the villagers,to the extent that they are too scared to talkopenly about the state of the village school.

In other cases, teacher and sarpanch areat loggerheads. This often applies inMadhya Pradesh, where sarpanchs havesome real power over local teachers as aresult of recent panchayati raj reforms.Teachers often resent this situation,especially if they consider themselves tohave a higher social status than thesarpanch. Some teachers did not hidetheir anger at being at the mercy — asthey see it — of an ‘illiterate’ (angoothachhaap) sarpanch, sometimes a womanat that. Another common bone of conten-tion is the mid-day meal (or ‘dry rations’)scheme, for which teacher and sarpanchare jointly responsible in some areas,leading to mutual accusations of corrup-tion. The PROBE survey came acrossseveral instances of a teacher beingtransferred because he or she had fallenout with the sarpanch, and also ofteachers not speaking up against a corruptsarpanch for fear of transfer. While pancha-yat supervision of local teachers may havesome potential as an accountabilitymechanism, there does seem to be a realdanger of abuse by despotic sarpanchs.

Informal interaction

Lack of active parent-teacher interactionis a serious shortcoming of the schoolingsystem as it exists today. Parental apathyplays a major role in this pattern, com-


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pounding the problem of teacher inertiadiscussed earlier. Parents are individuallyinterested in education, and have manyprivate complaints, but they have shownlittle ability to act collectively on thesecomplaints. While they have good rea-sons to feel somewhat powerless, theircollective power is also underused.

In looking for ways to achieve a moreparticipatory schooling system, it isimportant to take a broad view of thepotential tools of parent-teacher inter-action. Formal institutions such as VECsand PTAs have a role to play, and some ofthese institutions can probably bedeveloped with good effect, as has alreadybeen done in some areas. But much canalso happen outside these formal chan-nels of parent-teacher interaction. In areaswhere schools function relatively well,informal parent-teacher interaction doesseem to play an important role. Face-to-face meetings between teachers andindividual parents is one example of suchinteraction (for which the school calendarmakes explicit room in some urbanschools). As noted earlier, even withoutface-to-face meetings a teacher who hasa healthy concern for his or her reputationin the village society is likely to be sensitiveto parental views. Other examples ofinformal parent-teacher interactionmentioned in the PROBE survey includespontaneous parental initiatives to buildextra classrooms or to collect money forthe school, indirect interaction throughpolitical leaders, mahila mandalresolutions, representations and petitionsto government offices, setting up of rivalprivate schools, and even a cat strike byschool kids themselves (see section 8.6).

The agenda, thus, is not just to activateVECs, PTAs or even panchayats. Muchcan certainly be done in that respect, e.g.by giving these institutions more concretedecision-making powers than to organizeIndependence Day celebrations. But thereal challenge is to achieve greaterpopular involvement in schooling issues,through all available channels. Thisparticipatory process can be facilitated bythe government, but it is not its soleresponsibility. This is one motivation forthis appeal (the PROBE report) to popular


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organizations and the public at large toget more involved in educational matters.

C H A P T E R S I X

6.1. The Burden ofNon-comprehension

A municipal primary school in aprestigious locality of government officersin central Delhi. A well-maintained build-ing, reflecting the status of the sahebswhose servants’ children study here.Spacious classrooms, large glass win-dows with sunlight streaming in, and tidymats for children to sit on. In class 3, alesson on ‘air’ was being taught. Theteacher mechanically uttered certain‘scientific facts’, almost religiously reiter-ating what was said in the textbook. As ifin one breath, all the ‘lakshan’ or ‘prop-erties’ of air come gushing out:

Vayu sabhi jagah vidyaman hai.

(Air is everywhere.)

Vayu sthan gherti hai.

(Air occupies space.)

Vayu ka apna koi aakaar nahin.

(Air has no shape of its own.)

Vayu kai gason ka mishran hai.

(Air is a mixture of gases.)

Gas padarth ki ek avastha hai.

(Gas is one state of matter.)

The pupils, 8 - 9 year olds, were made torecite these mantras in chorus. Even ifthey tried, they would not be able to makemuch sense of such cryptic statements.In traditional reverence to the divine

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Inside the Classroom

utterance of the teacher (who in turnfollows the tenets of the textbook), childrencontinued the incantation as if under anawesome spell of these chants. Weattempt to make a friendly intervention:‘Tumne abhi abhi suna ki ‘hava sabhijagah vidyaman hai’, yani hava sabhijagah hoti hai. Kya aisa hota hai? Kyatumhare baste mein bhi hava hai? (Air iseverywhere. Is it, really? Is there air inyour bag?)’ Most deny emphatically, quitepossessively confident of the details oftheir own belongings. However, a fewcurious and enterprising ones do inno-cently peep into their school bags to see ifthis unknown elusive element somehowentered unnoticed!

A not-so-innocent peep inside theirschool bags might reveal much more,especially to those who have beenfollowing the national debate on the‘burden of schooling’. A few years ago,the eminent writer R.K. Narayan made amoving speech in the Rajya Sabha tohighlight the issue of the heavy load of theschool bag carried by young children. ANational Advisory Committee was set upunder the chairmanship of Prof. Yashpal,and its report Learning Without Burden,(Government of India, 1993) madeperceptive comments on the educationalsystem of the country and how to changeit. The major flaw was codified in thestatement that ‘a lot is taught, but little islearnt or understood’. This is asincongruous as a shopkeeper saying ‘wesold a lot of goods, but the customers

bought very little’! Indeed, teaching is atransaction, a negotiation, which cannotbe accomplished unilaterally, withoutensuring that what is taught is actuallylearnt and understood. Unfortunately, inour system teaching is merely doling outinformation; the course has to be‘covered’, but nothing is to be ‘discovered’.According to Learning without Burden, thegravitational load of the school bag is oneissue, but ‘the more pernicious burden isthat of non-comprehension’.

The above example from a municipalschool in Delhi illustrates how this burdenof non-comprehension routinely mani-fests itself even in a relatively privilegedurban classroom. This lesson on ‘air’ willbe taught in almost the same fashion inmost schools across the country. Thesame axioms will be repeated and similarmantras recited, without any concern forwhat a young child may or may notcomprehend. Various studies haveshown that children even at the age oftwelve years tend to resist the formal axiom‘air is everywhere’. They generally asso-ciate the concept of air with movement,with a flow, or with a breeze, and find itdifficult to believe that there is air in aclosed container or a flat tyre. Indeed, onegirl said she would ‘run outside with acontainer facing the wind to fill it with air’.However, our schools shall continueundeterred, piously preaching that ‘air iseverywhere’, in an intriguingly similar veinto ‘God is everywhere’. Just as the latterstatement is expected never to be ques-tioned, requires no validation and needsto be accepted in good faith, the former

too seems to vie for a similar position ofauthority.

The mantras shall not remain short andcryptic, but will progress to more ‘impress-ive’ long-winded tongue-twisters, whichmost children (and many teachers too)cannot even pronounce. Ironically, theclass-3 textbook for non-formal schoolsin Madhya Pradesh (Baal Pothi, SCERT,Bhopal, 1990), meant for children who areunable to attend formal schools, is evenmore terse, and revels in such tongue-twisters. Since the same syllabus is com-pressed into a ‘non-formal’ course, whichthese children are expected to ‘cover’ injust two hours a day, and in fewer yearsthan the pupils of a regular primary school,the packaging of information surpassesall norms of rational curriculum planning.

The lesson on ‘Weather’, for instance,packs a diverse collection of topics inclu-ding rain, cloud formation, vaporization,dew, the water cycle, snow formation,winds, weather forecasting, and so on.Strangely, it contains a diagram (withoutany mention of what it actually is) of acrystal-like snow flake seen through amicroscope, normally shown to studentsof higher classes in lessons on crystalformation! In the two ‘experiments’ritualistically described, it talks of ‘barabaraakaar aur akriti wali dhatu ki do platen(two metallic plates of equal size andshape)’ and ‘kuchh barf aur pani, kaanchki ek saaf jar mein (some ice and water ina clean glass jar)’, without bothering tocheck if such objects are ever available atnon-formal centres, or even formal

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schools. Indeed, how many villageschools have access to ‘some ice in aclean glass jar’?

In any case, it is absurd to use abstractterms such as ‘metallic plates of similarshape and size’ (an especially denseexpression in Hindi) with young children,making the textbook sound esoteric andunnecessarily ‘scientistic’. The samething can be said using simple termssuch as ‘steel ya pital ke dhakkan, jo ekhi jaise hon’ or just ‘thaalis’. In fact,textbooks deliberately tend to use compli-cated language, even where simple wordscan be used. For instance, instead ofsaying ‘zamin ke paas’ or ‘pani ki bhap’the book (and the teacher, on cue) wouldnormally resort to ‘bhoomi ke nikat’ or ‘jalvashp’. The lesson on ‘Weather’ ponti-ficates in this vein about air, vapour andother ‘misty’ things, using dense state-ments such as:

Kabhi kabhi pani ki vashp bhoomi

ke nikat hi baadal banaati hai. Is

prakar ke baadalon ko kohra

kehate hain. Jab pani ki vashp

bhoomi ke nikat thos padaarthon

ke chhote-chhote kanon par drav

ban jati hai to kohra paida hota hai.

The last sentence is incomprehensiblefor a child not just in class 3 but also inclass 8! Abstract concepts of water vapour,condensation, small particles of solidsubstances (thos padaarth), and theformation of mist, are all covered in onesentence. Moreover, the language usedis criminally insensitive to children, and

THE BURDEN OF EMPTY SCHOOLBAGS

‘The school bag has become an inevitable burden for the child... I haveinvestigated and found that an average child carries strapped to his back, like apack-mule, not less than six to eight kgs of books, notebooks and otherparaphernalia of modern education in addition to lunch-box and water bottle.’ Thusspoke writer R.K. Narayan in the Rajya Sabha about ten years ago. However, hewould have been surprised to note the contents of the schoolbag of the averagechild in PROBE villages — her problem is not so much an overload of books as thefact that her schoolbag contains very little — if she has one at all.

R.K. Narayan’s description of the ‘average child’ is heavily influenced by themiddle- class view. A similar bias runs through the school curriculum, alienatingchildren of deprived backgrounds. Textbook writers assume, for example, thatschools have a congenial learning environment, possess the necessary equipment,and follow the prescribed course of study. A textbook for a class 3 child readsthus: ‘Tum apne vidyalaya mein bhasha, ganit, vigyan, samajik adhyayan, kalaaur hast-shilp sikhte ho (you study language, mathematics, science, socialstudies, and art and craft at your school).’ In another lesson, a parent is escortedaround the ‘spotless, sparkling school’ by the principal, and passes the ‘schoollibrary’ on his way around the school. Both texts are way off the mark in thesedilapidated, often dirty, under-equipped village schools where even the three Rsare not adequately taught. Similarly, social studies textbooks in more than onestate routinely tell the child to look at his atlas or at the globe and charts. Thescience texts describe experiments involving simple equipment like a hand lens, abell jar, a stove, a funnel, etc. For these little children, all these instructions are inthe realm of fantasy.

violates their natural form of expressionand comprehension. The tendency to‘package’ as much information in as fewsentences as possible, and to targetchildren with encapsulated ‘bullets’, is anoverarching trend in curriculum develop-ment and textbook preparation. AsLearning without Burden notes:

... our textbooks are not writtenfrom the child’s viewpoint.Neither the mode of communication,nor the selection of objectsdepicted, nor the languageconveys the centrality of thechild in the world constructed[by the school]... Words,expressions and nuancescommonly used by childrenin their milieu are absent,...and an artificial styledominates, reinforcing thetradition of distancing knowedgefrom life. The languageused in textbooks thusdeepens the sense of ‘burden’attached to all school-relatedknowledge.


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6.2. Far from theRealities of Life

We now turn to a typical school in a fairlyremote village in Madhya Pradesh, wherethere are only two teachers for all fiveclasses. In this area, an average govern-ment school is a dismal structure,crammed with children of all ages huddledtogether, squatting on the bare unevenfloor in passive postures. Sounds eman-ating from this institution are normally inthe form of a cacophonous chorus when,made to chant their mantras, childrendeterminedly shout their guts out almostin a cathartic release. In a functioningclassroom there are rarely any normalhappy sounds — of joyous laughter,creative composition, active participation,excited discovery, curious questioning,music or poetry. Do we still wonder whysuch structures, and the ambience withinthem, do not allow much learning tohappen?

Children of classes 1-3 are all sittinghuddled in the verandah, while the othertwo classes sit inside the dark and dingyroom. The teacher seems earnest, butcan barely manage to ‘police’ the largeheterogeneous group, made up ofchildren aged anywhere between four andten years. In the name of ‘teaching’, hedepends entirely on the textbook, some-

times reading out aloud and at other timesasking children to copy from it. Unable tocope with three classes at one time, andfrustrated by the adverse work environ-ment, he adopts the principle of leastaction.

S ince the notion of ‘teaching’ in oureducation system is reduced to ‘givinginformation’, the teacher is often con-strained to perform accordingly. The actof teaching is normally limited to a set ofactions which include asking children toread on their own, making one child readout aloud, sometimes writing a few wordson the board, or dictating ‘correct’ answersto questions given in the book. This is

how teachers themselves weretaught, even by their best teachers,and this is what they perceive to beexpected of them. In this scenario thetextbook (or the syllabus) is the Bible,and the nature of the information itcontains largely shapes classroomtransactions. Teachers are oftenreluctant to put much effort intoteaching, but textbooks alsodiscourage any other activity, eventhough they may pretend to be activity-centred. For instance, children areasked to observe the ‘picture’ of anobject, rather than to go out and lookat the ‘real’ thing, be it a commonsparrow or the leaf of a plant. AsLearning without Burden observed:

Over the recent years, some

textbooks have adopted the

vocabulary of observation and

exploration,... but even here

virtually all commands for

observation conclude with

statements about what will be

seen, thereby making it unnecessary

to actually perform any activity.

Let us for a moment look at what childrenof class 3 in this village school are reading,and imagine what else an averageteacher would do in the given situation.The lesson this time, ‘Aao Sikhen’ (fromthe SCERT book Bhasha Bharti, 1996), isbasically a terse list of dos and don’tsabout traffic rules and symbols:

Vaahan chalaate samay mudne

se pehle haath se ishara karein.

(While driving a vehicle indicate

with your hand before turning.)

Ambulance, police ya fire brigade

ki gadi ko pehle jane dein.

(Allow the ambulance, police or fire

brigade to proceed first.)

Bachche, boodhe evam apaahij ko

rasta paar karne mein madad karein.

(Help children, the old and the

handicapped while crossing

the road.)

Below : Very young children are often the

most neglected and confused.


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This last sentence is almost hilarious,and epitomizes how easily textbookwriters forget the age, capacities, interestsand concerns of the learners. Text clearlymeant for adult drivers has been imposedon young children (most of them living inrural areas with no roads, hospitals or firebrigades!), ostensibly in response to acentral norm (MLL 1.3.4) that traffic rulesmust be ‘taught’ in class 3. In the sameunthinking manner these children will bemade to regurgitate these mantras in testsand examinations, through questionssuch as:

Sadak paar karte samay kin-kin

logon ki madad karni chahiye?

(Who all need to be helped while

crossing a road?)

Chauraha paar karte samay kin-kin

baaton ka dhyan rakhna chahiye?

(What needs to be kept in

mind while at the crossing?)

Hamein horn kahan-kahan

nahin bajaana chahiye?

(Where should we avoid

blowing the horn?)

Primary-school textbooks also wastemuch space in trivial or futile preachingand moralizing. There is an implicit biasof curriculum makers and book writers thatthe village poor are ‘ignorant and illiterate’and therefore need to be told how toconduct their lives ‘properly’. In addition,textbooks go out of their way to presentover-idealized situations — of democraticpanchayats, benevolent employers, goodneighbours, functioning hospitals andefficient governments. Simplistic general-izations are made and almost surrealsituations are constructed, whereas nat-ural conflicts and complexities of life arestrictly avoided, even if a majority of ourrural children actually live such lives andare deeply conscious of its realities. It is,rather, the protected urban middle-classchild who may not know the real face of asarpanch, the exploitative authority of acontractor, or the intricacies of taking loansfrom a money-lender. It is again the sameprotected child who has probably neverobserved a fly or a lizard, whereas hisvillage counterpart would not need to lookat ‘pictures’ to tell how many legs a spiderhas, or how to identify frogs’ eggs, andmay be far more knowledgeable about thenatural world. However the way schoolknowledge is structured and articulated,it never allows the rural child to have anedge over the ‘privileged’ urban ones.

Rural children find false platitudes abouttheir own lives routinely doled out asabsolute ‘truths’, with no chance of criti-cally analysing or questioning such state-ments. Children know very well that theselessons are not true, but are forced topassively accept them and even repeatthem as truths. For instance, the sameclass-3 textbook mentioned above con-tains separate chapters to describe (orrather eulogize) each of the following:

!"!"!"!"!" A village primary health centre with adoctor, a nurse and a compounder, etc.

!"!"!"!"!"A factory owner who readily agrees tothe workers’ demand for equal wages formen and women, when informed that thegovernment has passed laws to ensurethis.

!"!"!"!"!" A village panchayat which discussesdevelopment plans for the ‘gramin rozgarkaryakram’ (rural employment pro-gramme) and proposes to open a crèchefor women agricultural workers.

!"!"!"!"!" A woman who takes her child to thehospital for a vaccination and convincesher neighbour to follow suit.

!"!"!"!"!" A diligent postman who delivers mailthrough rain and rough weather.

!"!"!"!"!" A tribal leader who rebelled againstthe British, and whose village has beendeclared a ‘model’ village by the Stategovernment in his honour.

Below : Sharp focus needed: textbook writers

tend to forget the age, interests and concerns

of the learner.


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‘Remote’ facts versus ‘real’ fiction:

Two versions of the panchayat in Social

Studies textbooks.

Right: A typical textbook in PROBE

villages. This information-dense,

stereotyped account would not attract the

8-9 year olds for whom it is meant. The

page, too, is packed with print and the

illustration is stylized.

Below : An excerpt from an Eklavya text

— ‘Paise jutane mein deri (delay in getting

funds)’. Eklavya uses a real-life situation

faced by a panchayat member to develop

the topic. The narrative style is engaging

and the illustration is realistic.


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oks dSls \tgk¡ eSa xbZ Fkh u] ogk¡ vklikl ds lHkh xk¡o ds yksx lkjk dke rks gekjh rjg gh djrs gSaA ;kuh

?kjksa dh lkQ&lQkbZ] vk¡xu Nkcuk] yhiuk oxSjgA ij gj xk¡o nhokyh vyx&vyx fnu eukrk gSA nhokyhds dqN fnuksa igys vklikl ds xk¡o ds cqtqxZ yksx vkil esa lykg dj ysrs gSaA fdl xk¡o esa fdl fnu nhokyhgksxhA cl fQj ftl fnu ftl xk¡o dh nhokyh gqbZ vklikl ds lHkh yksx ogk¡ vius fj’rsnkjksa ds ikl nhokyheukus tkrs gSaA nhokyh dh jkr lHkh yksx xk¡o ds ckgj bdV~Bk gksrs gSaA lkjh jkr <ksy ctkdj ukpuk xkukgksrk gSA iVk[ks QksM+rs gSaA

vxys fnu pkj cts jkr ls yksx vius vius tkuojksa dks jaxrs gSaA xk;] cSy] HkaSl] cksnk] cdjh vkSjbuds cPpksa dks HkhA vUgsa ltkus ds fy, dBhyk vkSj eqjaxk cka/kk tkrk gSA fQj xk¡o ds lHkh tkuoj ,dtxg bdV~Bs fd, tkrs gSaA muds vklikl iVk[ks QksM+dj mUgsa nkSM+krs gSaA BkfV;k ftuds i’kq pjkrk gS muds ?kjtkdj nhokj ij ekaM+uk cukrk gSA muls diM+s vkSj [kkuk ysrk gS ++ + +

Right : A different Diwali.

The Eklavya text

describes Diwali in rural

Madhya Pradesh — and

retains sensitivity to

urban children.

Below : This style is

more common in the

textbooks in PROBE

states. It shows the

commercialized Diwali of

urban India.


74

The simplistic script and stereotypedcharacters are familiar, not very differentfrom government-sponsored posters.Often these stereotypes have less to dowith any conscious design to distort thanwith the simplistic notions harboured byurban middle-class people about rural life.

Policy-makers and textbook writers areseriously hampered by their limited viewof deeper social issues. Trained by thesame education system, and conditionedby the absence of criticality in the ‘official’culture of work, they all end up with similarscripts and crudely cloned characters. In

their agenda for school there seem to beno stories or even poems without a con-spicuous or trite moral.

Primary-science textbooks are packedwith information about personal hygieneand cleanliness, presented in a moral-

SOCIAL CLASS IN THE CLASSROOM

In a class-ridden society, children internalize classdistinctions in the classroom. The main source of this‘construction of class’ is the teacher. Curriculum too isimportant. By negating working-class experience andglorifying values and ideals which lie outside the world ofworking-class children, both lead the children to seethemselves as aliens in the world projected by the school.This is one insight from a detailed study of the functioningof a school for working-class children located inTughlakabad near Delhi. Most of the pupils belong tofamilies working in the stone quarries in the area.

Let us examine the role of the teachers first. Of the twelvepermanent teachers, none belonged to the lower castes.Even those who were from modest economic backgroundsdid not see themselves as belonging to that stratum afterbecoming teachers. All the teachers persistently complainedof the problems in their pupils’ homes: domestic violence,alcoholism, illiteracy of mothers, parental apathy, and so on.

Teachers blamed the home environment but took noresponsibility as educators. Some were alienated from thework, others disillusioned. ‘Teacher training tells us nothingabout the reality of our school,’ said one of the moreconscientious teachers. ‘All teaching methods I knew havefailed with these children. The only viable method I know isindiscriminate thrashing.’ Asked to elaborate on the efficacyof his thrashing ‘method’, he confessed that beating did nothelp, but that he used it to prevent children from disturbinghis personal work. Another teacher felt that free uniformsand textbooks were a waste when parents had no tradition ofcleanliness and book care. This young teacher felt it wasimpossible to communicate with these children of uncouthparents. ‘Teaching these children makes no difference,’sighed another teacher. ‘I don’t teach my pupils for morethan two hours. I have to do a lot of my own work and goabout my own business.’

Teachers freely used the children as personal helpers, forjobs like fetching water and obtaining cigarettes or paanfrom the local market. It was taken for granted that thesewere children of menial workers and were supposed to dosuch work at home and at school. Teachers themselves were

ever welcoming of any diversion from their teaching work.When the children failed, they attributed the failure to theinadequacies of the pupils and not to the inadequacies of thesurrounding society or the curriculum. It was a classic case of‘blaming the victim’.

Turning to the curriculum, its content was an arbitrary culturalimposition. The gulf between the high and the low wasnaturalized in the textbooks, e.g. using the image of honeybees (shahad ki makkhiyan) and other analogies from theanimal kingdom. The biographies of Madame Curie, AlbertSchweitzer, Gautama Buddha, Confucius and so on allconveyed the superiority of intellectual labour over manuallabour. At best they could inspire awe in these children bornand brought up to do manual tasks; at worst they could instilin them a feeling of inadequacy. Stories in the textbookemphasized the power of the mind, the ultimate magic whichcould turn a pauper into a king. The curriculum carried thesymbols of the socially-dominant groups, ignoring othersymbols — the knowledge offered was allegedly valuable forall. Often enough, the realities of the working-class settingwere naturalized and depoliticized, by either eulogizing orglorifying existing realities. The curriculum thus amounted toan organized symbolic aggression on the pupils, pressing themto internalize their subservient position in society. Thediscouragement they felt was but natural.

Textbooks were oblivious of real-life contradictions. Thesmaller children had a lesson on animals in the zoo, where theanimals had hygienic surroundings and were protected fromvarious diseases and vitamin deficiencies. Sick animals hadcaring hospital doctors. The facilities at the zoo presented aglaring contrast with the conditions at the quarry. Theteachers were not even remotely aware of the chasm betweenthe text and its context.

It should be mentioned, however, that the teacher and thecurriculum are mere actors in the theatre of class construction.The master script of that construction derives from the classrelations obtaining outside the classroom.

Mohammad Talib.


75

istic manner. However, when it issuggested that real-life stories aboutchildren’s everyday problems such as liceor scabies, and safe practical ways to dealwith them, be included, ‘experts’ frowndisgustedly and complain that the meremention of such ‘filthy’ topics makes themfeel itchy! Lice are very common in youngchildren and it has been found that poormothers frequently use cheap insect-icides on children’s heads. However, theurgency of this problem and the need totackle it sensitively in the classroom does

not move our urban middle-class experts.The middle-class bias is visible throughmost of what is taught and also the way itis taught. For instance, there is always atopic on ‘types of houses’, in which theconcrete bungalow, the semi-paccahouse and the jhuggi are mechanicallypresented as given ‘types’, as if suchnatural scientific categories existed. A‘good’ house is always one with aseparate kitchen, toilets, windows, elec-tricity, etc., and millions of children wholive in conditions that do not conform to

these norms are immediately alienated,and signalled that their lifestyle is ‘bad’.

In the case of tribal children this alienationis severe, since their very existence andidentity is portrayed ambiguously andproblematically. Moreover, teachers them-selves are often deeply conditioned bysocial biases against tribal people, andreinforce these biases in the classroom.Teachers often refer to them throughstereotypes, such as ‘people engaged indrinking and dancing, highly superstitious,and not interested in education’. In atextbook for class 6, questions about‘where in the State are tigers found?’ wereframed in exactly the same way as ‘whereare tribals found? (adivasi kahan paayejate hain?)’. No effort was made to evensemantically differentiate between ‘wherepeople are found’ and ‘where people live’.No tribal children, and no tribal names,ever appear in their textbooks. In fact,teachers are always ‘correcting’ theirnames, since they find them odd or con-sider those to be distorted versions of‘proper’ sanskritized names. Textbooksroutinely carry a chapter on ‘Our State’(Hamara Pradesh), which mentions that‘tribal and backward persons (pichhadelog) inhabit our state in large numbers’.One can only imagine what this does tothe self-image of tribal and so-called‘backward’ children, and what messagesit gives to the others.

The issue of language is crucial and alsoquite complicated. While language iscentral to the very identity of a person, andmost tribal communities would want topreserve it as an integral part of theirculture, they are also acutely aware of thesurvival value of the dominant language.Moreover, tribals who regularly transactwith non-tribals are often bilingual. Asound approach is to begin with themother tongue, in this case the specifictribal dialect, using the Devnagari script(or the prevalent script of the region) towrite what the child already knows as aspoken language. The child can continueto learn bilingually, and gradually switchto Hindi (or the dominant regionallanguage), though not taught in its presentsanskritized form, which inhibits the learn-ing capabilities of all children. In practice,however, Hindi is often imposed from thevery beginning.

OF TORN TEXTS AND DIFFICULT ONES

When textbooks are the only books a child possesses, as is often the case in thePROBE villages, these texts become the child’s only windows to the world of

learning. Unfortunately, a glance at textbooks available to PROBE children shows

that these windows are often blurred or cloudy in more than one sense.

Most textbooks used in the sample schools were printed on coarse paper which

crumbled easily. Secondly, the covers were of thin paper (i.e. the books had nobinding). Battered texts were, therefore, a common sight. The pages were small,

and crowded with tiny print. Illustrations were few and unclear. No space could

be spared for highlighting important points, or for review notes at the end of achapter. In the set we retained for examination, 10-15 pages were blurred in some

textbooks, in a few others only 10-15 pages were legible. In one state, this

problem applied to all classes, subjects, and even printing presses.

An even more serious problem is that children continue to be bombarded with

excessive information. For the disadvantaged child, another alienating factor isthe heavy middle-class bias of most textbooks.

In no state were textbooks found to be satisfactory along broad parameters ofcontent, language, relevance and presentation. They were invariably faulty on

one or more counts.

To overcome the hurdles posed by textbooks, children have been found to bypass

them altogether with the active guidance of the teachers. Learning then gets

reduced to copying questions and answers from the kunji, and committing them tomemory.

Some state governments are showing signs of openness to innovation andchange. For instance, the language used in textbooks does seem to be in a state of

transition towards simpler idiom. But on the whole textbook writers continue to

feel a great urge to cram the textbooks with an awesome load of vocabulary,concepts and information. And sensitivity to children in general, and

disadvantaged children in particular, is sorely lacking.


76

6.3. InformationInvasion

Curriculum-makers are beset with themisguided notion of some global‘knowledge explosion’, and constantlyargue that children must ‘catch up’ with it.It is believed that a backward country likeIndia must strive to match the industrializedcountries, where knowledge is fast ex-panding, compelling our children to learna lot more than they used to do. When it ispointed out that children in so-calleddeveloped countries bear a lesser ‘bur-den’ of information and concepts (Euro-pean children, for instance, learn conceptsof valency or chemical equations muchlater than their Indian counterparts), theargument is turned around to say ‘they cannow afford to go slow’.

The myth of the ‘knowledge explosion’ isbased on a confusion between knowledgeand information. While it is true that thiscentury has seen an explosion of tech-nologies that enhance human capacity toincrease its database of facts, the rangeof concepts and theories that assist in theorganization and understanding of factsdoes not grow very fast. A crucial aim of

children’s education should be to promoteconcept-formation and enhance thecapacity for theory-building. All childrenare natural theory-makers, and from muchbefore they go to school they begin toconstruct their own theories and explana-tions for the world they observe. Learningin childhood is not a process of accumu-lating or storing information about differenttopics, but the ability to apply the under-standing of one phenomenon to others.Observation, categorization and general-izations are natural skills with which a babyfirst responds to her environment and alsolearns to communicate through language.However, our school system does notallow for the child’s mind and personalityto develop naturally, and most oftenprevents her from using most of her facul-ties. Moreover, it doles out information ina strictly linear pattern, e.g. we first teach1-10, then 20-30, and so on; or, say, thesyllabus includes ‘Our locality’ in class 1,‘Our district’ in class 3, ‘Our state’ in class4, and ‘Our country and the world’ in class5. The school system also treatsknowledge as disjointed fragments ofinformation, e.g. teaching ‘Parts andproperties of plants’ in class 2, ‘Thefunction of leaves and photosynthesis’ inclass 3, ‘The seed-flower-fruit cycle’ inclass 5, etc. By contrast, the naturallearning process in children is far fromlinear, and the way they processinformation about the world they live in isfar more holistic and integrated.

These considerations, however, areignored by our ‘experts’, most of whomhave no serious experience of workingwith children and little understanding oftheir learning strategies. After the 1986National Policy on Education, the Nat-ional Council of Educational Research

and Training (NCERT) had undertaken amajor syllabus revision to try to makecurricula child-centred. The class 3 text-book Exploring Environment (prepared aspart of the revision process) has the meritof being printed in four colours, unlikemost other textbooks used in governmentschools across the country. However, itremains far from exploratory, and onlyfeigns to follow an activity-based ap-proach. Despite the numerous questionsthat intersperse the text, the languageremains highly didactic and the contentessentially incomprehensible. Excerptsfrom the chapter on ‘Weather’:

When water evaporates it

changes from liquid into

water vapour. Water vapour

is the gaseous form of water.

Wet things dry when the water

in them becomes water vapour

and moves into the atmosphere.

You cannot see water

evaporating into water vapour.

Water vapour exists in the

form of very tiny particles.

We notice that most of these sentencesdo not offer any real explanations. Theyare only statements which go round incircles, as tautologies. If a child asks, ‘Butwhat is water vapour?’, she gets theanswer, ‘Water vapour is the gaseousform of water!’ Naturally the child soonstops trying to make sense of what isbeing ‘taught’ at school and falls in linewith what is expected, namely, only tounthinkingly repeat what has been told.The child’s natural curiosity and propen-sity to constantly ask questions of ‘why’and ‘how’, are all silenced by the schoolenvironment and she quietly conforms tothe role of being at best a passive listener.

Passive postures: natural for schools,

unnatural for the child.


77

AN

AL S

HA

H

DA

NG

ER

SC

HO

OL

At the time of the examinations, she ishailed as a ‘good student’ only if shesomehow manages to faithfully reproducethese mantras, when asked the followingquestions (from the same textbook):

a) State the difference between a liquid

and a gas.

b) Liquids and gases take the ——— of

the container.

c) Name two uses each of liquids, solids

and gases.

d) How does water vapour in the

atmosphere get condensed?

Examinations become the major referralsystem, and ultimately shape theaccepted patterns of teaching, textbookwriting and classroom interaction. If testsand examination questions expectchildren to memorize information and giveanswers in fixed predetermined phrases,irrespective of whether they understandthem or not, there is little hope of changingthe ambience of the classroom. In fact, ina significant number of schools, teachersno longer insist on textbooks, but resortonly to ‘guidebooks’. These kunjis arewritten specifically as a ‘key’ to somehowturn the overbearing locks of the exam-inations, and extract some preciousmarks from the elusive kitty. The ability tothink, understand, express in one’s ownwords, to explore or to experiment, to uselogical reasoning, to observe carefully,etc., are given no value or place in the

school because ultimately they are notevaluated in any way.

The information invasion is all the moretaxing given the archaic way in whichlanguage (the basic foundation of allschool learning) is taught in manyschools. Language teaching in the earli-est classes continues to mechanicallyfocus on alphabets, and even the wordschosen are often out of any living contextfor the child. The nature of the text isformal, boring and far removed from thespoken form. Language teaching makes

no effort to include colloquial forms fromdifferent dialects and assumes thatchildren will learn to communicate onlythrough repetition or rote memorization.This is certainly not how children learn alanguage, and unless they are made toactively engage with words and meanings,to play with them, they remain diffident tocope with any further demands of thecurriculum. Despite the importance of themother tongue for early instruction, ourvernacular textbooks effectively prove to bespeaking a ‘foreign’ language for themajority of children.

In most private schools which claim to be‘English medium’, children are further bur-dened with an even more alien language,which is not taught as it should be, namely,as a ‘second language’, but is the mediumfor all the content they must grapple with.Normally young children can quite easilylearn to speak many languages at thesame time, if they are provided with astimulating environment to use themnaturally and fearlessly. However, for mostof our children there are very few natural‘learning environments’ to listen to orspeak in English, either at home or out-side. Moreover, the school does not pro-vide a friendly or stimulating ‘learning’environment for the language. On thecontrary, many private schools unnaturallyforce a repressive regimen to ensure thatchildren speak only in English, eveninformally between friends. Some are

HOW LANGUAGE IS TAUGHT

These questions from a languageexamination paper for class 5 are a goodindication of the artificial way in whichlanguage is taught in most schools.Thechildren are asked here to write 6 linesof a poem which they have memorized,and to give the meanings, theopposites, synonyms etc. of words /phrases from lessons in their texts oreven from word-lists. Languageteaching is not focused on activitieswhich develop skill in using language,but on correct spelling, neat writing,and rote memorization.

viuh ikB; iqLrd ̂ ckyviuh ikB; iqLrd ̂ ckyviuh ikB; iqLrd ̂ ckyviuh ikB; iqLrd ̂ ckyviuh ikB; iqLrd ̂ ckyHkkjrh* ls fdlh dfork dhHkkjrh* ls fdlh dfork dhHkkjrh* ls fdlh dfork dhHkkjrh* ls fdlh dfork dhHkkjrh* ls fdlh dfork dhN%iafDr;ka fyf[k,AN%iafDr;ka fyf[k,AN%iafDr;ka fyf[k,AN%iafDr;ka fyf[k,AN%iafDr;ka fyf[k,A

foykse ’kCn fy[kks foykse ’kCn fy[kks foykse ’kCn fy[kks foykse ’kCn fy[kks foykse ’kCn fy[kks —

i;kZ;okph ’kCn fyf[k;s i;kZ;okph ’kCn fyf[k;s i;kZ;okph ’kCn fyf[k;s i;kZ;okph ’kCn fyf[k;s i;kZ;okph ’kCn fyf[k;s —

eqgkojksa ds vFkZ fy[kks eqgkojksa ds vFkZ fy[kks eqgkojksa ds vFkZ fy[kks eqgkojksa ds vFkZ fy[kks eqgkojksa ds vFkZ fy[kks —

vFkZ fy[kdj okD; cukvks vFkZ fy[kdj okD; cukvks vFkZ fy[kdj okD; cukvks vFkZ fy[kdj okD; cukvks vFkZ fy[kdj okD; cukvks —


78

known to have gone so far as to punishchildren for violating this rule, i.e. for havingspoken to a friend in their mother tongue!

6.4. MLLs:Meaningless Levelsof Learning

The current trend towards centralizednorms of learning and uniform testingcriteria has taken the confusion betweeninformation and learning one step further.The recent formulation of ‘Minimum Levelsof Learning’ (MLLs) as national criteria toevaluate pupil achievements is part of thiscentralizing trend. Despite the stated aimsto ‘lighten the curriculum of its textual loadand the burden of memorizing unneces-sary and irrelevant facts’, and to ensure‘the acquisition of basic competenciesand skills’ (Minimum Levels of Learningat Primary Stage, NCERT, 1991), the MLLshave only added to the burden of teachingand learning. The slogan of ‘competency-based learning’ has made little differenceto curricula and textbooks, which havereligiously followed the unrealistic list of‘contents’, only flimsily disguised as‘competencies’. The sacred MLL codehas dominated all decisions and actionsin school education, right down to whathappens in the classroom. In fact, we cansee the roots of many classroom prob-lems discussed earlier staring directly atus through the pages of these codes.While these national norms and theirunderlying philosophy raise many con-tentious issues, this section focuses onthe stated expectations from children andthe process adopted to ensure that theyare met.

Some textbook committees now assignchapters to be written on given ‘MLLcodes’. For instance, someone is askedto write a chapter on ‘1.5.8’, which isnothing but the ‘competency’ statement(for class 5) ‘Calculates lowest commonmultiple of 2 or 3 numbers each of whichdo not exceed 10’. Another chapter iswritten on ‘1.4.8’ (for class 4), which says‘Demonstrates understanding of primenumbers up to 50’, or on ‘8.4’ (also class4), ‘The usefulness of living things for

relation and its consequences’; 10.5.1‘Knows about dangers from misuse ofscientific knowledge, e.g. in war’; and fi-nally (an omnipresent slogan!), 6.3 ‘Smallfamily, happy family (small family norms)’,followed by 6.5.5. ‘Finds out increase inpopulation according to each censussince Independence and understands itsimplications’. If this last one providessome comic relief, others carry somealarming overtones, for instance: 1.5 ‘Careagainst persons of bad habits and badcharacter’, and 1.5.2 ‘Sees relationshipbetween crimes and bad habits and badbehaviour, e.g. alcoholism, bullying, lackof consideration for others, etc.’

Note that the second digit in the codesignifies the class in which a given MLLhas to be achieved, though it does notreally matter, since most of these ‘topics’cannot ever be really ‘learned’ at theseages. For instance, how is a child of class3 expected to: (4.3.4) ‘Know about im-portant physical features, climate, vege-tation, crops, and industries of the district’,(4.3.5) ‘Trace the map of the district andshow physical features, important routes,etc.’, and (7.3.1) ‘Understand importantfunctions of the human body, such asdigestion, respiration, blood circulation,etc.’?

The list offers more and more surprises,and continues in a similar vein, to mech-anically stuff in as much content aspossible in these preliminary years ofschooling. Any doubts or questions raisedare cursorily silenced with the grimreminder that so much has to be ‘covered’before they reach class 6, since the

man’. Instead of trying to create chaptersaround interesting themes, which allowfor many different competencies and skillsto be creatively enhanced, we seem tohave slipped deeper into a singularlyreductionist framework.

At school, MLLs which are impossible to‘cover’ in class get mindlessly convertedinto homework. Recently the mother of achild studying in class 4 of KendriyaVidyalaya, at IIT Mumbai, was horrified tofind that her daughter had been asked to‘write all number names up to 10,000’ ashomework during the week-long vacation.One shudders to think what would happenif teachers were tempted to use the sameapproach to fulfil MLL statement 1.5.2 —‘Writes number names up to 1,00,00,000(one crore)’. (A quick estimate suggeststhat a person counting non-stop wouldtake over 100 days just to recite thesenumbers aloud!)

The MLLs for Environmental Studies areparticularly daunting. Having realized thefutility of trying to camouflage these interms of ‘competencies’, the Committeeforged ahead unabashedly, codifying thecontent in an interminable list of state-ments such as: 1.1.4 ‘Practises personalcleanliness including toilet habits’; 2.5.1‘Understands relationship between theCentral, State and local-selfgovernments’; 5.5 ‘Our struggle forfreedom’; 5.4 ‘Progress of man from earlytimes to the present age’ ; 8.5.3 ‘Knowsthe present schemes (a few) to increaseand improve forest cover, cleaning rivers,tanks and such others, e.g. the Ganga.’;9.5 ‘Energy and work’; 10.3.1 Earth-sun


79

burden of the syllabus is heavy thereafter.Every attempt to revise curriculum andtextbooks suffers from similar pressures‘from above’, from what experts claimmust necessarily be taught, by the dictatesof their respective disciplines.

Once such MLLs have been spelt out atthe national level, they become sacro-sanct. No amount of post-hoc qualificationand clarification about these being‘suggestive’ guidelines, amenable tomodification in different contexts, candilute the authority of these dictates. What

stumbling block in trying to changeteaching methods or textbooks in thepresent setup. However innovative theteaching-learning materials and method-ology might be, they tend to becomeineffective if the pattern of evaluation ofchildren’s achievements is not changedin consonance with the child-centredphilosophy. If the focus of assessmentcontinues to be on recall and testing ofmemorized information, reproduced in theformalized ‘un-childlike’ language of thetextbook, or mechanically using pre-determined algorithms to produce ‘correct’answers, then very little headway ispossible in the desired direction.

There is an oft-quoted example of aprimary-school teacher who took unusualcare of his wards and worked hardthroughout the year to teach them variousthings in an interesting manner. However,at the time of the class-5 Board Exam-ination he found, to his dimay, that manyof them failed to perform according to therules of the game, and were terriblydisheartened to be detained in the sameclass for another year. To subvert the op-pressive and meaningless pattern ofevaluation, he worked out what he thoughtwas an eminently fair way to conduct theexamination. He wrote all the answerson the board, giving all his pupils the sameopportunity to copy from it, and thendifferentiated them on their capacity to‘copy’, creating his own version of a ‘Board’examination! This, in fact, increasinglyhappens in many places, and we did talkwith teachers (some of whom had usedthis method even for the class-8 BoardExamination) about why they have con-sciously adopted such so-called ‘unfair’practices. Many of them say this is doneout of helpless ‘compulsion’, since theyhave found that even with the best effortthey cannot ensure adequate pass per-centages. When children come to themat the last stage, they find them critically‘weak’ in all their basic learning, andcannot then significantly improve thesituation. Moreover, the dismally low passpercentage of around 5-10 per cent in theschool can demoralize not just theteachers but also the younger children,still striving to make it when their turncomes. So mass copying seems theonly way for them to cope with an

ANTI-COPYING ACTS

If children need to copy answers from the Board in order to pass at class-5 level,what will be their fate at class-10 level, if they reach that stage? The answers areglimpsed in the abnormally low pass percentage at class-10 level. They can also beseen in the curious legal measures adopted in at least two PROBE states to curb theorganized use of ‘unfair means’.

In Uttar Pradesh, according to a Times of India report (19 March 1998) the stategovernment recently felt compelled to add further modifications to an anti-copyingordinance passed in 1992. The aim was to check the use of unfair means in allexaminations including those conducted by the Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad(which handles secondary school examinations in U.P.). According to this reportthe Chief Minister says that the ‘copying syndicate had become so powerful thatmass copying had become an industry and examination centres were taken up oncontract’.

Bihar, too, has taken a tough stand against the use of unfair means. A report(Pioneer, 7 June 1996) describes another facet of this problem: the tough standtaken by the government to prevent cheating had resulted in plummeting passpercentages. The reporter is appalled to recall that

the students pleaded and even fought with the authorities to allow chori for at least

once more and go strict afterwards. When the administration acting under the

instructions of the Patna High Court refused to budge, a large number of examinees

opted out to wait for an easier opportunity to get through. Those who mustered the

courage to sit in the examinations, scripted a pathetic tale: The previous year’s pass

percentage of 80 crashed to 15 with the success story of districts like Chhapra, Siwan,

Gopalgunj and Madhepura capsuled in an ominous expression ‘two per cent’.

The report notes that the questions which this situation raises have to be answered‘by those who have ruled the state, not the students’. The crash of passpercentages indicates that the remedy would perforce have to concentrate onanalysing why students are failing, and enabling them to pass honestly, rather thansimply disabling the use of unfair means.

children can or cannot learn becomesabsolutely inconsequential.

6.5. Evaluation andExaminations

If classroom interaction is far from child-centred, examinations are worse still, andcan be described as virtually child-threatening. The present pattern of evalu-ation sets the tone for all that goes wrongin the system. It also serves as a major


80

insurmountable situation, and to keep thesystem from collapsing under the weightof its own contradictions, while alsopractically ensuring that the school is notovercrowded with ‘repeaters’.

Sometimes there is a fine line betweendifferent coping strategies (some officiallyacceptable, some not) used to ensurebetter pass percentages in public exam-inations. Whether it is ‘moderation’ ofmarks, as is regularly resorted to byBoards of Examinations themselveswhen they systematically inflate marks topush more children across the ‘passingline’, or the open ‘Board’ examinationconducted by some teachers, it is clearthat the contradictions of the examinationsystem are becoming difficult to contain.Moreover, erratic marking, erroneousyardsticks for evaluation and even wrongmodel answers against which answerscripts are marked, are known to playhavoc with the future of children and reducethe credibility of the system even further.

The fact that examination failures andmass copying tend to be more commonamong disadvantaged students is oftenacknowleged. There is a complex relation-ship that links the two, and connects withthe cumulative handicaps experienced bythese students. Fewer teachers, minimalinfrastructure, economic deprivation, un-educated parents, poor teacher motivation,high teacher absenteeism and low studentachievements are all connected links ofthe same chain.

The examination system is actually

cheating the masses by

concealing the deep divisions

that exist within the education system,

where a poor mill-worker’s child

from a neglected government school

is made to compete with children

from well-to-do public schools.

The system submerges these

ugly realities under a veneer of

total parity among candidates.

But it hardly needs probing to

find that a majority of failures

belong to the disadvantaged.

Krishna Kumar.

The hopelessness and frustrationcreated by the examination process, andthe pressures of an increasingly compet-itive system, have taken a high human toll.Among disadvantaged families, childrendrop out of the system when it becomesimpossible to cope with. Pupils from urbanor middle-class backgrounds, on the otherhand, are under tremendous pressure tostudy against all odds. They are proppedup with all possible measures and tendto give up only when the psychologicalstress becomes unbearable. In theprocess, some end up with skewedpersonalities or as nervous wrecks.Examination anxiety has not only led tohigher rates of depression among schoolchildren but also driven some of them tocommit the most agonizing act of takingtheir own life. Every year, soon after the

results begin to appear, we get to readnewspaper stories from across thecountry about children commiting suicideson finding out that they have failed in thepublic examination.

Our pattern of examinations needs urgentreform. This step is important both in itsown right as well as to prevent furthercorruption of the entire schooling process.Introducing ‘open book’ examinations atall levels could be an important startingpoint, since the very format of suchexaminations demands a change in thenature of the questions posed. Open-book Board examinations for classes 5and 8 are already being conducted in over800 government schools in MadhyaPradesh, in the context of innovativeprogrammes run in collaboration withEklavya (see section 8.4). Practical sys-tems of continuous evaluation need to beintroduced which positively look for whata child knows rather than what she doesn’tknow. There is also scope for child-friendly

Boy fails in exam,commits suicide

NEW DELHI: A 16-year old boy whofailed in the class-X Boardexamination reportedly killed himself.

The body of Ravinder Kumar wasfished out from a canal in the Narelaarea of northwest Delhi on Thursdayafternoon. He is learnt to have beenmissing since he went to check hisexamination results on June 15.Ravinder Kumar was a resident ofPooth Khurd village in Narela, and wasstudying at a government school.

When he did not return till late in theevening on June 15, his family tried tosearch for him. The school authoritiestold them that the boy was upset byhis results and left the school withouttalking to anyone.

The Times of India20 June 1998


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and non-threatening methods of evalu-ating children’s creative talents and criticalabilities, such as school tests whichincorporate solving puzzles and riddles,completing a story, performing a simpleexperiment, etc. Conscious promotion oforiginal responses in examinations, inchildren’s own style and language, wouldshow that personal understanding isvalued. Such changes would require afairly demanding reform of the entiresystem of examinations, but they areessential to ensure that children’smotivation for learning is not killed in thebud.

6.6. Coping withSchool

In the absence of much ‘learning’ atschool, the major preoccupation ofchildren, teachers and parents is actually‘coping’ with school. Even urban educatedparents feel helpless, and often quietlyshoulder the burden of tutoring childrenat home or arranging for private tuition, intheir attempt to somehow cope with thedemands of school. Some parents realizethat our rigid schooling system seems todullen their children and stifle theircreativity and originality, but feel trappedwith no alternative. An exceptional teacheror a privileged school may help nurturethe faculties of creativity and criticalenquiry among a small minority ofchildren.

One finds only isolated examples ofchildren who have the confidence tochallenge the system. How many childrenwould react like eleven-year old Gargiwho, when asked to critically analyse hertextbook, chose one section from thechapter on ‘air’ and sent in her expressivecomments appended with two pages ofher textbook?

The section on Priestley’s experimentwas most confusing. Mercury, redpowder, heating, re-heating...Add to thisPriestley, Lavoisier, from a glowingsplinter, oxygen. Garbage ! It went zoomover my head.

Amongst the millions of our schoolchildren, as well as our teachers, very few

can so confidently place the blame on theirbooks or the syllabus, and even dare tocall it ‘garbage’! Unfortunately, most havebeen conditioned to accept the curriculumas it is, and have long given up trying tomake sense of it. Those who cannot keepup with this curious game end up with thedisabling belief that there is somethingwrong with them.

This syndrome is an important part ofthe ‘discouragement effect’ discussed inchapter 3. Unable to cope with the burdenof non-comprehension, many childrengive up. Others are withdrawn from schoolby their parents, who find that not much isbeing learnt anyway. Ironically, theseparents, themselves uneducated, areoften resigned to believe that their childrenare not ‘brainy enough’ for school, notrealizing that the system is to blame. Thesystem gradually ‘filters’ out most children,as things get harder and harder in highergrades, allowing only the socially privi-leged ‘cream’ to pass through and com-pete for the limited goodies waiting at thetop of the pyramid. Despite general publiccriticism and regular suggestions ofchange, our curriculum-makers sticktenaciously to their conventional wisdom.There is, in fact, a strong connection be-tween the elite view of the schoolingsystem as a filtering process (see p.3)and the resistance of the schoolingadministration to curriculum reform.

The resistance, however, is not immu-table. Eklavya’s work in Madhya Pradesh(see section 8.4), for instance, has shownthat much can be done not only to improvetextbooks and simplify the curriculum butalso to disseminate these improvementsfar and wide. In Rajasthan, too, publicinitiatives have led to the production ofbetter-presented textbooks, distributed forfree in most government schools.Initiatives of this kind are all the moreimportant considering that improvedteaching material can be developed bydedicated educationists at a relativelysmall cost, and without much delay.Further efforts in this field could relievemillions of children from a heavy burden.


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C H A P T E R S E V E N

Unsuspecting readers of the Departmentof Education’s glossy reports onelementary education are unlikely tofathom the dismal state of the schoolingsystem, described in the precedingchapters. These official reports, written inan upbeat tone, present an awe-inspiringview of a vast, sprawling education sys-tem, guided by the spirit of the Constitution.This complex marvel spreads its well-coordinated tentacles all the way fromapex institutions such as NCERT (NationalCouncil of Educational Research and

Training) and NIEPA (National Institute ofEducational Planning and Administration)and state-level Education Directorates tothe Block Education Officers, who are intouch with every teacher. Huge nation-wideprogrammes like Operation Blackboardhave been launched to improve all villageschools. Teacher-training facilities areavailable in every district. Problems oflow-literacy areas are being tackled withambitious schemes like APPEP, BEP,DPEP and so on. Numerous NGOs arehard at work in cooperation with the state

AN

AL S

HA

H

Education Management

governments. Alternative education faci-lities such as non-formal educationcentres are being set up for disadvantagedchildren. Things are under control, and(irrespective of the publication date) uni-versal elementary education is expectedto be achieved ‘within five years’ or so.

The situation looks quite different fromthe vantage point of the PROBE villages,where the school management structuregives the impression of a rigid bureau-cracy, unresponsive to the real needs ofteachers and children. Classroom reali-ties are out of focus, and the preoccupationinstead is with holding the administrativefort and fulfilling official directives. Whilethe PROBE survey was not geared to anin-depth investigation of this problem, wedid get a glimpse of it from our interviewswith teachers and parents, as well as froma short questionnaire sent to state-leveleducation directorates. In this chapter,after taking a brief look at the admini-strative structure of the schooling system,we will present a few ‘case studies’ ofmanagement issues viewed from theschool level.

7.1. TheManagementStructure

Elementary education, earlier a ‘statesubject’, was brought into the concurrentlist in 1976, and is now the jointresponsibility of the state and centralgovernments. The bulk of public expen-diture on elementary education, however,is borne by state governments, with thecentral government focusing largely onsupplementary schemes such as Opera-tion Blackboard. Responsibility for theseschemes is often shared with state gov-ernments, or transferred to them in duecourse. For instance, teachers appointedunder Operation Blackboard are initiallypaid by the central government, and laterincorporated in the state’s regular teachercadre.

To supplement the PROBE survey, wesent a short questionnaire to state-level

education directorates, focusing on man-agement issues. The responses revealsome diversity of approaches to the uni-versalization of elementary education indifferent states. But there are also prob-lems common to most states. One ofthese is the lack of financial resources.Given that about 95 per cent of recurrentexpenditure on elementary education isspent on salaries, little is left for itemssuch as the maintenance of school build-ings, teaching aids or pupil incentives.Another common problem is that themanagement structure is hopelesslyoverstretched. It seems that the admini-strative wing of the schooling system hasfailed to keep pace with the rapid increasein the number of schools, teachers andpupils in the last fifty years.

One consequence of this inadequacy offinancial and administrative resources,according to the respondents, is apervasive failure to resolve matters relatedto teachers’ service conditions, as well asto ensure the smooth functioning of indi-vidual schools. Regarding the first prob-lem, in most states three or four serviceassistants at the District Education Officestruggle to maintain the service recordsof thousands of teachers (only in Keralahas the maintenance of these recordsbeen decentralized beyond the Block

level). The task is complicated by a multi-plicity of pay scales for teachers withdifferent qualifications. Transfer policiesare often arbitrary, and their implemen-tation politicized. The situation has beenfurther complicated by the large-scaletakeover of private schools in the courseof the school expansion effort, and thecompensation and other issues arisingfrom this. Frustration has led manyteachers to resort to litigation or agitation.Each of the PROBE states has thousandsof cases pending in the High Courtrelating to teacher appointment, promo-tion, transfer and similar matters (inRajasthan, for instance, there are morethan 3,000 such cases). Some senioreducation officials complain that courtcases and teachers’ unions absorb mostof their time and energy.

‘On an average, stateeducational administrators

(including district educationofficers) spend 20 to 40 per cent

of their time attending tolegal wrangles.’

Pioneer, 7 October 1997

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COLONIAL LEGACIES

It is easy to forget that ‘modernization’ as a generalizedprocess of change in Indian society and its governancestarted under the auspices of colonial rule. Colonization wasa pervasive process, affecting every point of interactionbetween the state and the citizen. Indeed, in colonizedsocieties like India, the modern state apparatus took shapeunder the auspices of, and generally to fulfil the purposes of,colonial rule.

In education, colonization meant the replacement ofindigenous institutions of learning, including village schoolsby a new structure of state-supported institutions. Thoughsporadic efforts were made to incorporate the older systemsinto the new one, ultimately the older systems were destroyedor, in some cases, marginalized. This process had severalconsequences. One was to reinforce the association whichalready existed in the public mind, between modern educationand foreign rule. Another was to dry up the moral andfinancial support of the community for the local teacher andhis efforts. Change in the teacher’s status in the communityand the perception of his role had to do with changes in thecurriculum too. The new curriculum had no resonance ofindigenous traditions of knowledge and learning. Indeed, thenew curriculum exuded hostility towards folklore and theheritage of arts and crafts. School knowledge was nowmagically encapsulated in a single source — the officiallyprescribed textbook.

The teacher lost his cultural membership of the villagecommunity, but even as a state functionary — his newidentity — he had a low status and hardly any power in thecontext of his own professional activity. Poorly paid, herepresented the lowest rung in the hierarchy of theDepartment of Education. Insecure, cynical, andprofessionally ill-equipped, the teacher became a stickler afterrules, as an eminent British officer and writer, Arthur Mayhewpointed out in a book published in 1926. Mayhew linked theintellectually unstimulating school ethos with the serviceconditions and the professional personality of the teacher.The teacher’s subordinate status also explains his behaviourat the time of inspection. An inspecting official’s visit to thisday is an occasion to please the official by presenting thechildren and the school in the best possible light, rather thanto draw the official’s attention towards deficient facilities andproblems. The weak status accorded to the teacher under

colonial rule extended to the perception of the training required

for becoming a teacher. Teacher training did not establish

linkage with the university system till well after independence,

and still remains a state-run activity as far as primary education

is concerned, barring just one exception.

Despite the popular view that modern education was culturally

alienating, colonial rule witnessed a consistent demand for

expansion of educational facilities, especially for college-level

enrolment. The demand was articulated, in most cases, by the

elite strata of society whose members saw and used education

as a means of consolidating their dominance under the

emerging political economy. While illiteracy persisted in the

larger society, higher education expanded at a rapid rate and

continued to do so after independence. However, higher

education also remained largely focused on the prescribed

syllabi, textbooks and guides. For the overwhelming majority

of college entrants, the aim of instruction and study was to

avoid failure in the annual examination. Fear of examination

failure became a dominant feature of the culture of education,

its influence extending all the way to the primary school.

Thus, while higher education gained precedence in terms of

public demand and government policy, its character and

influence on other levels of education were in keeping with the

culture of colonialism.

Intellectual and cultural subordination, and dissociation of

knowledge from application are two key features of this culture

which post-colonial societies continue to struggle with. The

notion that knowledge is produced by Western societies, that

the best we can do is to ‘catch up’ with them, is related to the

first feature. Its impact on syllabi and textbooks — both

densely packed with ‘facts’ — used at all levels of our school

system is all too obvious. The second feature is reflected in

the assumption which characterizes the teaching of all kinds of

information, that it need not be applied in a real situation. This

assumption applies to crucial information, too, such as oral

rehydration therapy for diarrhoea or prevention of malaria by

not letting water accumulate in open spaces. More often than

not, both the teacher and the children tend to regard such

information as crucial for success in examinations, not for

actually preventing illness.

Krishna Kumar.


85

The second problem (poor admini-strative support of individual schools) hasmany repercussions, ranging from poormaintenance of school buildings to lackof teacher morale and accountability.Some of these have been dealt with inearlier chapters, others are illustrated inthe case studies below.

7.2. OperationBlackboard

Operation Blackboard (OB) was

launched in 1987 with the laudable aim ofensuring that every primary school had a

minimum quota of facilities and aids,described as follows:

(1) At least two reasonably large all-

weather rooms along with separate toilet

facilities for boys and girls,

(2) at least two teachers, as far as

possible one of them a woman, and

(3) essential teaching and learning material

including blackboards, maps, charts, a

small library, toys, games and some

equipment for work experience.

(Department of Education, Annual Report,

1997-8, p.32)

All new primary schools were to beequipped with all three components fromthe very beginning. Further, OperationBlackboard treated these as ‘three inter-dependent components which togetherprovide a composite approach to the prob-lems faced by schools’.

The PROBE survey suggests thatOperation Blackboard has achieved somepositive results. For instance, the propor-tion of single-teacher primary schools inthe PROBE states has significantly de-clined (see chapter 4). Also, the famine ofteaching aids and classroom material hasbeen partially relieved. Aside from teach-ing aids, some schools are now the proudowners of items such as a bucket, a rope,a school bell, mats, and so on.

However, as we saw in chapter 4, theoverall achievements of Operation Black-board are well below target. One way ofassessing the shortfall is to ask howmany PROBE schools had achieved theOperation Blackboard benchmark, asdescribed above. The short answer is‘none’, if only because no PROBE schoolhad functioning, separate toilets for girlsand boys. Let us then consider a moreliberal benchmark, with the followingcomponents: (1) at least two all-weatherrooms, (2) at least two teachers, and (3)at least some teaching aids. Only one-fourth of all government primary schoolsin the PROBE villages attain this minimalbenchmark.

Further, it should be noted that theappointment of extra teachers underOperation Blackboard (mainly to dispensewith single-teacher schools) has, to some

EDUCATION (MIS)MANAGEMENT IN NORTHERN MADHYAPRADESH

Words are inadequate to describe the state of primary education in northernMadhya Pradesh. One has to experience the total darkness of the mind to whichentire generations have been condemned in order to appreciate the damage thathas been done.

In Madhya Pradesh, Board examinations are conducted in classes 5, 8, 10 and 12.Before class 5, the rule is that no child can be failed. The harsh reality is that alarge proportion of pupils appearing for the class-5 examination are not even able towrite their name. To keep up appearances, and pretend that the system isfunctional, teachers resort to mass copying during the class-5 Board exam. Eventhen the results are not high. In some centres, when there is a hue and cry andcheating is prevented, the pass rate drops to 10 per cent or even less! Instead ofbeing helped to grow, children learn to cheat, and to scorn rationality andknowledge.

The basic problem is a total lack of motivation amongst the teachers. In the ruralprimary schools, it is rare to find a teacher conscientiously teaching a class.Teachers complain about the lack of infrastructural resources, low salaries and theburden of non-teaching duties. But these are largely excuses, as teachers in privateschools (who work more seriously, despite their lower salaries) have shown. Thereal problem is that teachers have little concern for the pupils they are entrustedwith.

This lack of motivation percolates down from the politicians and bosses whocontrol the education system. They have corrupted the entire framework. Theappointment of teachers, their transfers and other administrative affairs are drivenby political favours and financial remunerations. In Satna and Rewa district, thereare many schools run in interior villages under the patronage of powerfulpoliticians. These schools have virtually no infrastructure, yet every yearthousands of pupils from these schools appear for the class-10 or even class-12examinations. There is a fixed rate for passing the exam, ranging from Rs 2,000 toRs 5,000 depending on the kind of result required.

The private schools have better standards, but they are run as businessenterprises, mainly catering to privileged families. In most cases they are beyondthe means of the poorer sections of society. A few private schools see educationas a social need and structure themselves to provide quality education to the poor.But these are rare initiatives, looked upon with suspicion and even hostility byprivileged social groups.

Chandra Kant Shourie.


86

extent, substituted for normal teacherappointments rather than supplementedthem. Although Operation Blackboardappointments are meant to be additionalappointments, several states sloweddown on regular teacher appointmentsafter Operation Blackboard began, to keepthe overall salary bill under control.Indeed, the overall rate of growth ofteacher-appointments has been lower inthe last 10 years than in 1978-86 (Gov-ernment of India, 1998, p.42) OperationBlackboard’s success in reducing thenumber of single-teacher schools has tobe read in this light.

Another major lapse is the failure torealize that if the different components ofOperation Blackboard are ‘interdepen-dent’, then supplying one of them only mayreduce the impact of the programme oreven prove self-defeating. Here are someexamples:

!"!"!"!"!" The school has the toys and teachingkits, but these are kept locked up becausethere is only one teacher, one broken-downclassroom and classes are held in theopen (Khurd, Dholpur district, Rajasthan).

!"!"!"!"!" Musical instruments and the sciencekit are in the teacher’s house because theschool building cannot be locked (Kanari,Varanasi district, U.P.).

!"!"!"!"!"The teachers have received OB trainingbut the school has not received the OBteaching aids (Vangaon, Saharsa district,Bihar).

Sometimes there is a hint of corruption.At several schools, headteachers com-plained that they were forced to sign forthe complete OB kit whether each itemwas there or not, and whether it wasfunctional or not. Musical instruments inparticular were usually received in abroken state. Other schools complain thatthe original items were non-functional,and could not be replaced or repaired asOperation Blackboard is a one-time grant.

The management structure, however,shows no responsiveness to these imple-mentation problems. Instead we have abureaucratic approach, which concen-trates on meeting certain quantitative

Built in 1987, the village school atHardua Pancham (Damoh, M.P.) got aroof only last year, and that too, claimthe frustrated teachers, because theyhad persuaded Navbharat Times topublish a story about it. Two roomsof the school are still without a roof,and the flooring is still kachcha.

Note that Hardua Pancham is not avery poor village. In fact, the mid-daymeal had to be upgraded to sabzi andtwo rotis as children did not like theearlier dalia.

Hardua Pancham’s story is an extremecase, which almost turned the school(walls without a roof) into a localattraction. Yet this story brings to thefore a number of worrisome issuesthat are also common elsewhere:

1. While nothing was done about theschool building, many children’sstudies were seriously impaired. Someeven dropped out or quietly tookrefuge in a private school. In manyPROBE schools, teaching is suspendedfor weeks or even months at a time asthe school building is flooded duringthe monsoon. Leaky or absent roofsalso lead to further decay of other partsof the school building.

2. Teachers and parents have littlepower to make or demand relativelysimple improvements in the schoolbuilding.

3. The administration remainedoblivious to the problem until itsurfaced in the media. Even after that,the work remained incomplete.


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TOO LITTLE AND VERY LATE

targets in terms of schools covered,teaching aids distributed, and so on. Ifthese targets are met, Operation Black-board is assumed to be doing fine.

Indeed, the real irony is not that the prob-lems exist but rather that the managementstructure takes no cognizance of them,and has even decided that this phase ofOperation Blackboard is a closed chapter.In its 1996-7 Annual Report, the Depart-ment of Education claims (p.33) that items(2) and (3) above have been ‘fully providedto all the targeted primary schools’; the1997-8 report reiterates (p.32) that ‘thephysical targets set under the Eighth Planwere achieved with remarkable success’.The next phase is to focus on providing athird room for primary schools with enrol-ment greater than 100, and on upperprimary schools. It is as if the reality onthe ground was supposed to match thefigures in the document, rather than theother way round.

7.3. IncentiveSchemes

Incentive schemes for school children areconceived by the planners as ‘part of theapproach of government’ to motivateparents ‘to send their wards to school’(Report of the working group on elem-entary education, Ministry of HumanResource Development, 1996). Earlier in-centive schemes run by state govern-ments include free textbooks and uni-forms, often meant for children belongingto scheduled castes or poor families. Inmid-1995, the central government initiateda national ‘mid-day meal’ scheme, whichhas actually been translated into ascheme of distribution of monthly ‘dryrations’ (usually wheat) to school children— see chapter 8.

Most teachers in the PROBE states feltthat these incentive schemes were of greatbenefit to disadvantaged children, mainlyin terms of enhancing enrolment and at-tendance. Parents tended to share thisview. The most popular scheme was the‘dry rations’ scheme, widely reported tohave boosted school enrolment. The fact

that grain rations of 3 kgs per month aresuch a powerful magnet is a telling indi-cation of the poverty of many parents.

Thus, the potential usefulness of incen-tive schemes is not in doubt. The mainproblem seems to be their tokenist imple-mentation. The coverage of most incentiveschemes is very limited (see Chart 7.2),and incentives are supplied in an erraticmanner. Faithful to its inflexible and unres-ponsive style of operation, the educationadministration has ignored most of theimplementation problems, preferringinstead to create new and equally tokenistschemes from time to time.

Lack of timeliness in the provision ofincentives is a common complaint. Forinstance, barely half of the 123 schoolswhere scholarship schemes were opera-tional had received the scholarshipmonies for the current year (severalmonths after classes had begun). Delaysof one or two years are not uncommon.Not only was the timing erratic, theamount received was often far less thanthe amount due. The consequences oferratic supplies are particularly serious inthe case of textbooks. When those arereceived at the wrong time and in the wrongquantity, they may have little impact, or

even disrupt the learning process. In thePROBE states, except for Rajasthan, text-books were delivered at any time duringthe school year, and quantities were moreor less arbitrary.

Erratic timings and whimsical distributiondisrupt school functioning in other waystoo. For instance, they breed hostilitybetween teachers and parents, as thelatter often suspect teachers of swindlingscholarships and other incentives. Oftenteachers simply divide whatever they havereceived between all the pupils (oneclaimed that he ended up giving one rupeeto each child!). If textbooks are in shortsupply, children may receive one bookeach instead of a complete set; we evenfound one household where two brothersstudying in different grades were expectedto share a single book. Further, ill-plannedincentive schemes generate considerableextra work for teachers, aggravating theproblems of teacher shortage and excess-ive paperwork. Much time and energy isspent in preparing lists of eligible stu-dents, dealing with complaints, distri-buting food rations, etc. Monthly distribu-tions of food rations are a recurrent diver-sion. In Uttar Pradesh, teachers have totake the children to the nearest ration shop,often a long walk (2 kms in water-logged


88

terrain, in one case). Sometimes severaltrips are required, as children from severalschools turn up together and the rationshop is unable to cope. In Bihar, teachershave to collect the food from the shop, andweigh and distribute it themselves — aninteresting indication of the importanceassigned to teaching duties by the edu-cation bureaucracy.

7.4. The InspectionSystem

The inspection system is a vital linkbetween the education administration andindividual schools. Its main function, inprinciple, is to ensure that adequatestandards are maintained in government

schools. One aspect of this is the role ofthe inspection system as an accountabilitymechanism. But inspectors can do muchmore than breathe down the neck ofteachers, for instance by ensuring thatteachers’ complaints are heard and byadvising them on teaching methods. Aswe saw in chapter 5, improved account-

ability and greater support play acomplementary role in helping teachersto function more effectively.

That most of the PROBE schools lackedthis vital input should be evident from thepreceding chapters. We have noted, forinstance, how the inadequacies of theschool infrastructure tend to be left un-attended (chapter 4). Thus, even theprimary support mechanism — a func-tioning infrastructure — cannot be takenfor granted. Such negligence cannot butaffect the performance of teachers, bothin hampering their teaching work and insanctioning a lack of accountability to thepupils under their care. A careless man-agement thus distorts the educationalprocess by suggesting that education isnot a serious matter or, alternatively, thatthe education of particular pupils is notimportant. Another distortion is that themanagement structures fail to ensurebetter facilities for disadvantaged children,whose parents are unable to provide thehome support which teachers take forgranted. This secondary level of supportcan hardly be expected of a managementwhich often does not even provide theprimary level of infrastructural support.

The inspection system remains obliviousto these matters. To start with, one quarterof the PROBE schools had not beeninspected even once during the twelvemonths preceding the survey. Over thesame period, 24 per cent of these schoolshad been visited three to six times, and 4per cent had been visited more than sixtimes. In some cases, repeated inspec-tion was accompanied by some indicationof corruption. The more important reasonfor uneven frequencies of inspection isthat inspectors tend to concentrate on the


89

more accessible schools. Here again,the schools in greatest need of supportfrom the administration (including single-teacher schools, often located in remotevillages) receive least attention.

Among the schools that did have at leastone inspection in the preceding 12months, a vast majority (82 per cent)reported that there had been no follow-upaction. Thus, inspectors came and went

AN INSPECTOR TURNS UP

The primary school in Goala, a small village near Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh),is considered to be relatively good by local standards. On 19 February 1997,one of us happened to be there when the inspector arrived. Extracts from thewitness’ diary:

When I arrived around 2 p.m., there was mayhem in the school. The children wererunning around without any supervision, mostly on or around the playground (theschool has 145 pupils enrolled). Two of the three teachers were present. One ofthem was busy decorating the main classroom with the help of a few pupils, inanticipation of a function to be held two days later. He was freely hitting thechildren, in between sticking colourful paper triangles on the walls. The otherteacher was idle, though he kept shouting at the children. The classrooms werefilthy.

At around 2.45 p.m., a scooter arrives, driven by a young man. Riding pillion is astern, imposing woman wearing an elegant sari — Mrs A. Singhal, the BlockEducation Officer. As she storms into the school, the teachers affect sheepishpostures. Mrs Singhal has a well-rehearsed routine which lasts about 15 minutes:she asks where the missing teacher is (‘on leave’ is the answer), why the childrenare running around, why the teachers didn’t send written reminders to the parentsof absent children, why the names of chronic absentees are not struck off the rolls;asks whether there is a blackboard in each classroom; criticizes the lack of sittingmats, and the dirty state of the premises; inspects and stamps various registers(that, in fact, was her main activity); and finally writes a few lines in the InspectionRegister, summarizing her observations.

Mrs Singhal was firm, and sometimes rude, but not entirely unhelpful, and she evenmanaged one or two smiles. Her work does seem to serve some purpose, though itis quite superficial. For instance, she showed little concern for the fact thatteaching had been suspended without good reason; in fact, a brief conversationsuggests that she is resigned to this being the situation in most local schools. Sheis in charge of 130 schools and claims to visit each of them every month; this isprobably an exaggeration, but she does seem to take her work seriously.

As soon as Mrs Singhal’s scooter is out of sight, the teachers heave a sigh of reliefand make a beeline for the local tea-shop. Before departing, they tell all the childrento sit quietly in rows, instruct a ‘monitor’ to take the names of those who causetrouble in their absence, and hit a few children at random to show that they meanbusiness. Later in the afternoon I see the teachers cycling back home, one hourahead of the official closing time — the inspector’s visit hasn’t had much impact.

as if these schools were doing just fine.Their primary concern is to examineschool registers, and while in 69 per centof cases the inspector was reported tohave ‘observed classroom teaching’, onewonders how often this went beyond atoken ritual. Only 29 per cent of inspectorsnoted ‘infrastructural needs’, and 9 percent were reported to have done nothingat all. As for talking with parents,inspectors do not seem to perceive thisas being part of their job.

As with incentive schemes, tokenismseems to be the main flaw of theinspection system. Interestingly, however,a majority of teachers described them as‘useful’, mainly from the point of view ofenhancing teacher attendance and themorale of the school. Despite its limita-tions, the inspection system seems to becontributing something as an account-ability mechanism. In this connection, itis worth noting that 80 per cent of theteachers were present at the time of ourvisits. These unannounced visits tookplace late in the morning, and fail to capturethe problem of late arrival and earlydeparture, but nevertheless, they indicatelower levels of outright absenteeism thanmight have been expected in the light ofparental complaints and the relaxed workculture of the teaching profession. It ispossible that the inspection system hassomething to do with this, though otherfactors (such as parental vigilance andpeer pressure) may also be at work.

It seems that the contribution of theinspection system, if any, is limited to acrude ‘watchdog’ role. One reason for thisis that inspectors, much like other cogs inthe administrative wheel, feel a certainhelplessness. Taking action on com-plaints may lead to protracted bureaucraticor even legal wranglings, so the temp-tation is to do the minimum. Even thewatchdog role of inspectors is affected bythis syndrome. The PROBE surveyencountered only one case of action beingtaken against an errant teacher.

Another cause of routinization is that theinspection system, like other parts of theadministrative structure, is overstretched.As one senior bureaucrat of the EducationDepartment in Rajasthan put it:

The main problem is the large size of

organizations which is aggravated by

the opening of new schools without

keeping adequate provisions for

administrative strengthening, so much so

that the schools per inspector is now

more than 50. With such a weak

supervisory system, and an ever-

increasing work load, there is a

tendency for indiscipline, absenteeism

on the part of the teacher, and lack of

sensitivity on the part of the

administration.


90

Faced with this work overload, inspectorsand their superiors concentrate on whatthey see as the priority, such as themaintenance of school registers. Onceagain, the quality of teaching is out of focus.We might add that the figure of 50 schoolsper inspector on average (for Rajasthan)conceals wide regional variations, leadingto a much higher ratio in the less wellstaffed areas. We have met Block Edu-cation Officers who, flanked with a singleassistant, had to look after the inspectionand administrative support of close to 200schools. Asked how he managed tosupervise so many schools, one of themaptly remarked, ‘asambhav hai (it’simpossible)’.

7.5. The SchoolRegister

Why it matters

The school register, which recordswhether little Kavita came to school onWednesday or how long her brother HiraLal has been absent, is a document ofvital importance. It enables the teacher tospot at a glance the regular absentees,and contemplate necessary action. Whennumbers are large, attendance may betaken twice a day to check how manychildren have returned to school after thelunch break, or simply to convey theimportance of attending the afternoonsession. The register also gives a head-teacher valuable information on thefunctioning of the school, the social back-ground of the pupils, and so on. The sameinformation is of much use to the Edu-cation Department. For instance, the allo-cation of teaching posts and of pupilincentives (e.g. scholarships and foodrations) between different schools ismeant to be based on enrolment data fromthe school register. Similarly, drop-outrates calculated from these data can helpto assess the quality of schooling indifferent villages or areas. At the nationallevel, education statistics compiled fromschool returns are often used for researchand planning.

Unfortunately, school registers in thePROBE states are not just badly kept butsingularly unauthentic. Specifically, enrol-ment figures are routinely inflated, andmany children marked ‘present’ in theattendance register are nowhere to beseen in the classroom. Following on that,the school register is seldom used tomonitor the attendance of the individualchild. Nor does it provide a credible basisto assess the functioning of a school, orto compile official data.

The precise extent of exaggeration inenrolment and attendance figures is noteasy to assess, but the PROBE surveypoints to the following:

(1) On the day of the survey, the number ofpupils actually present (based on a directcount by the investigators) was, onaverage, 20 per cent below the figureindicated by the attendance register. Thetrue discrepancy between actual andofficial attendance is likely to be larger,because numerous schools had not filledthe attendance register at all; theseschools tend to fill the register one dayafter the event, and are likely to exaggerateattendance even more than other schools.

(2) Comparisons of school records withhousehold data suggest that officialenrolment figures are (on average) about20 - 5 per cent above the true figures. Infla-ted class-1 enrolment figures account forthe bulk of the discrepancy.

Enrolment data

The principal means through whichteachers inflate enrolment figures are asfollows:

Under-age enrolment : This consists ofwriting the names of children below thenormal age of school entry (e.g. 6 years)in the school register, even though theyare not actually attending school.

Nominal enrolment : This often happenswhen teachers are required to carry outhouse-to-house enrolment drives at thebeginning of the year. Children arenominally enrolled, with the consent oftheir parents, even if they don’t attendschool or attend for just a short period. In

some cases, teachers automatically putthe names of all the local children in therelevant age group on the school register.

Double enrolment : In this variant ofnominal enrolment, children attending anunrecognized private school (or tuitioncentre) are also enrolled in the localgovernment school. This is because anunrecognized private school cannot issuecertificates at the end of the primary stage.These children actually attend the privateschool, but get their certificate from thegovernment school.

Fake enrolment : In this case, teachersinclude fake names in the school register,or write the names of out-of-schoolchildren without consulting their parents.If necessary, teachers dip into their ownpockets to pay the fees of the ghost pupils(as may also happen with other over-enrolment techniques).

Of these methods, under-age enrolmentseems to be the most common. One note-worthy consequence of this practice is thatthe margin of exaggeration in official enrol-ment data is particularly high in class 1.This, in turn, has led to various mis-perceptions. For instance, official esti-mates of ‘drop-out rates’ obtained bylooking at the ratio of class-5 to class-1enrolment are much higher than the drop-out rates found in household surveys,including the PROBE survey (see Boxoverleaf).

Why do teachers inflate enrolmentfigures? They have several incentives todo so: (1) If enrolment falls below a certainlevel, they may be transferred (becausethe school’s pupil-teacher ratio falls belowthe official norm); (2) They may be underdirect pressure from the Department ofEducation to show progress in enrolmentover time, or ‘universal enrolment’ in therelevant age group; (3) Incentives such asfood for mid-day meals (in which teachersoften have a ‘stake’ of some kind) may beallocated on the basis of enrolmentfigures; (4) Parents may seek nominalenrolment for their children, to getincentives that do not depend on regularattendance, such as monthly food rations;(5) Private schools may approach themfor ‘double enrolment’, a mutually advan-tageous arrangement. The bottom line is


91

that enrolment data are in shamblesacross the country, undermining a vital toolof school management and planning.

Attendance data

Attendance records are marred by similarirregularities. To start with, in manyschools the teachers were simply unableto produce the attendance registers. In afew cases, this could be blamed on poorinfrastructure, which made it difficult tostore registers in the school. More com-monly, the attendance registers were keptelsewhere for no apparent reason. If theheadteacher is absent, the registers maybe locked up, though otherwise available.One teacher simply refused to show thedocument and gave figures off-hand, withno relation to the number of childrenpresent. Others were happy to allow theinvestigators to examine the registers, butonly after ‘massaging’ the attendancefigures in their presence.

A majority of headteachers, however,cheerfully shared the attendance data, andnor did they make any effort to hide theproblem of inflated attendance. A commonpractice is to fill the attendance registerone day after the event, and to mark all ormost children as present. If an inspectorturns up, he or she can simply be told that‘we were just about to take down theattendance’, and shown a neatly-filledattendance register for all the precedingdays. About one-fifth of the schoolssurveyed had not taken attendance by thetime of the investigators’ visit in the middleof the day. Even in cases where attend-ance had ostensibly been taken, therewere glaring discrepancies between thefigures entered in the register and theactual number of children present. Only asmall minority of schools showed con-scientious maintenance of attendancerecords.

As with enrolment data, teachers havepragmatic reasons to exaggerate attend-ance figures. For instance, when thecriterion of eligibility for monthly foodrations is 80 per cent attendance duringthe previous month (see chapter 8), it isobviously convenient to massage theattendance figures so that all children passthe test. The supervisor of a cluster of ten

ENROLMENT PATTERNS: MYTHS AND REALITY

The Department of Education’s latest Annual Report contains some interestingsurprises. For instance, the ‘gross enrolment ratio’ at the primary level (that is, thenumber of children enrolled in primary schools as a proportion of all children aged6-10) turns out to be a heart-warming 94 per cent in Rajasthan, rising to 115 per centin Gujarat and 143 per cent in Nagaland — all well above Kerala’s puny 91 per cent.Also heartening is the fact that the gross enrolment ratio (GER) is higher for girlsthan for boys in several states. On the negative side, the all-India GER seems tohave registered its first-ever decline, plunging from 104 per cent in 1995-6 to 91 percent in 1996-7.

These figures, however, are not worth the paper they are printed on, based as theyare on official enrolment data compiled from school records. The GER might as wellstand for ‘gross exaggeration rate’: in 1992-3, when more reliable data from theNational Family Health Survey indicated that about one-third of all children in the6-10 age group were out of school, the national GER was 106 per cent, rising to 108among scheduled tribes and 111 among scheduled castes! Similarly, for the PROBEvillages, GER figures based on school records would be much higher thanenrolment rates obtained from household survey data.

This is one example of the confusion caused by inflated school records. Anotherexample concerns official data on ‘drop-out rates’. According to the same report(p.160), the proportion of children who quit school between class 1 and class 5 inthe PROBE states is 36 per cent for boys and 40 per cent for girls. Note in passingthat these numbers are hard to reconcile with the GER data printed in the samereport. Be that as it may, PROBE survey data suggest much lower drop-out rates:among ever-enrolled boys in the 13-18 age group, only 7 per cent failed to completeclass 5 (the corresponding figure for girls is 22 per cent, but this may be anunderestimate due to undercounting of adolescent girls). These estimates arebased on a relatively small sample, but they are broadly consistent with similarcalculations based on National Family Health Survey data. There is, in short,strong evidence that official estimates of drop-out rates are seriously inflated.

The main reason for this is the practice of ‘under-age enrolment’, described in thetext. Due to this practice, the margin of exaggeration in official enrolment data isparticularly high for class 1. Hence, indirect estimates of ‘drop-out rates’calculated by taking the ratio of class-5 and class-1 enrolment (the standardmethod) are themselves on the high side.

The fact that the true drop-out rates are, in all likelihood, much lower than theofficial estimates is good news. However, this finding has to be read in the light ofthe fact that many schools practise ‘automatic promotion’ of children from oneclass to the next. As discussed in chapter 3, some of them learn very little in theprocess.

Data sources: Department of Education, Selected Educational Statistics 1993-94 (pp. 4-7) and Annual Report 1997-98 (pp. 155-60).


92

schools in Madhya Pradesh aptly sumsup the situation in the area under hischarge:

First, there is a survey of the

6-14 year olds and their enrolment

status. There is a lot of exaggeration

at this stage to avoid trouble.

For the same reason no names

are cut off once placed on the

list... At the attendance stage,

there is exaggeration again —

if the attendance falls below

50 per cent, the teacher’s

increments are affected.


93

7.6. RegionalContrasts

Contrasts between the four PROBEstates have received little attention so farin this report. The main reason is that thesize of our sample is too small to makereliable regional comparisons. However,some tentative patterns did emerge fromthe quantitative and qualitative data, inclu-ding the following.

First, there is little to choose between thePROBE states, in terms of the conditionof the schooling system. All the major

problems identified in earlier chapters(dilapidated infrastructure, inadequateteacher resources, low classroom activity,stifling curriculum, etc.) apply to somedegree throughout these four states.Regional contrasts are of secondaryimportance.

Second, Bihar is the state where thesituation is most critical in many respects.For instance, Bihar has the worst infra-structural facilities, abysmal teacher-pupilratios, and the most haphazard imple-mentation of pupil incentive schemes. Inaddition, Bihar has various problems ofits own, such as erratic payment ofteachers’ salaries and disruption of

schooling due to law and order problems.Last but not least, Bihar shows little signof making any attempt to resolve thesituation. If anything, the schooling systemseems to be deteriorating year after year.

Third, if one were to ask which of the fourPROBE states is ‘doing best’, we wouldtentatively answer Rajasthan. It is not thatRajasthan is doing better in every respect,or that it is far ahead of other states. Infact, literacy rates in Rajasthan are stillquite low, and abysmal in the case of girls,reflecting both a legacy of endemic illiteracyand a highly patriarchal culture. However,the schooling system in Rajasthan doeshave some positive features in com-parison with the other PROBE states, andthere are signs of hope for the future. Forinstance, compared with other PROBEschools, primary schools in Rajasthantend to have a better infrastructure and tobe better maintained. Pupil incentiveschemes are also more extensive in Raj-asthan, and apparently better managed(e.g. free textbooks are received in mostschools). Even the interaction betweenparents and teachers was found to bemore positive in this state. All this may bea statistical accident, but these observ-ations may be of interest given thatRajasthan — unlike Bihar — has madesignificant efforts to improve the schoolingsystem in recent years. The PROBE

survey suggests that these efforts are notin vain.

Fourth, within Uttar Pradesh, the hillregion is doing distinctly better than otherparts of the state. Secondary data confirmthat literacy and school attendance ratesare considerably higher in the U.P. hillsthan in other parts of the state, and variousfield studies have also noted the rapidprogress of elementary education in thisregion. The better districts within that re-gion are doing remarkably well; Garhwal,for instance, has literacy rates above 90per cent in the 15-19 age group — for boysand girls. There are interesting parallelshere with the schooling revolution in Him-achal Pradesh, discussed in chapter 9.

One message running through thesetentative comparisons is that state gov-ernments reap as they sow. There is ageneral problem of state apathy towardselementary education in the region, whichis responsible for the dismal state of theschooling system. Within the region, thereare some signs of positive change in themore ‘interventionist’ states, notablyRajasthan and also to some extentMadhya Pradesh. By contrast, in Uttar Pra-desh and (especially) Bihar, where elem-entary education continues to receive alow priority, the situation is not only dismalbut also stagnant if not deteriorating.


94

Grave Irregularities in BiharA sample check of four documents of the 40‘education districts’, according to the CAGreport revealed large-scale ‘illegal’appointments, opening of schools sansgovernment approval and granting of‘irregular’ promotions by the department...

In the test check of documents inMuzaffarpur, Sitamarhi, Vaishali andSamastipur districts the CAG reportedly‘detected 226 illegal appointments’ ofteachers, opening of 1007 primary andsecondary schools without prior approval ofthe government and payment of higher scalesto 1190 ‘untrained’ teachers ‘not eligible’ forsuch higher scales. A few teachers continuedin service for several years even after the ageof superannuation, the report stated noting

‘grave irregularities’ were committed in theappointment of teachers on compassionategrounds.

No training was imparted in eleven primaryeducation colleges since 1991 in fourdistricts, even though Rs 4.51 crores wasspent on salary and allowances of theofficers and staff of these colleges, the CAGreport said.

Only one teacher taught all the subjects ineach of the 713 primary schools in threedistricts while there was not a single teacherin 81 schools. In four districts, 541 schoolshad no building or land on their own.

The Hindu (17 March 1997).

C H A P T E R E I G H T

On the whole, there has been littlechange in the state of India’s schoolingsystem during the last few years. Never-theless, there are a few interestingdevelopments; a sample of these isexamined in this chapter. The discussionis not exhaustive (the District PrimaryEducation Programme, for instance, isoutside the scope of this chapter), but wehope that it will give you a fair idea of recenttrends.

8.1. School Meals

On 15 August 1995, the Prime Ministersolemnly announced from the rampartsof the Red Fort that the government was

launching a national school-meal pro-gramme. At the time of the PROBE survey,in late 1996, the programme was meantto be in full swing. How is it doing?

The case for school meals

The main argument for school meals isthat they help to improve school enrolmentand attendance. How far this actuallyworks in practice remains to be estab-lished, but the informal evidence isencouraging. In areas where schoolmeals are operational, most teacherstake the view that they have boostedschool attendance, and parents share thisview.

An

increasingly

common

sight:

private

schools in

rural areas.

AN

AL S

HA

H

School meals have another feature thatmake them particularly effective in pro-moting school attendance: they provide anincentive not only to the parents (in theform of an implicit subsidy) but also to thechildren (who enjoy the free meal). Thisis important, since regular attendancedepends on the motivation of children asmuch as on parental effort. Unmotivatedchildren have to be patiently coaxed bytheir parents in order to go to school, andmany parents lack the conviction or thetime to do that. School meals help to solvethis problem, by attracting children on theirown.

Aside from this incentive argument, thecase for school meals also involves anutrition argument and a socializationargument. The strength of the nutritionargument depends on how nutritious themid-day meal actually is. Providing a mealwith high nutritional content can be exp-ensive, in terms of both food costs andlogistic arrangements. However, even arelatively simple meal may have someimpact on the nutritional status of children,at least in deprived areas where caloriedeficiency is endemic. Further, the nutri-tion argument is not just that school mealsmay boost child health, but also thathungry children are unlikely to be goodlearners. Even a plateful of khichdi canhelp to alleviate classroom hunger.

The socialization argument is simply thatsitting together and sharing a meal helpsto erode the barriers of class and (espe-cially) caste. The fact that, in some villages,upper-caste parents criticize or even ob-struct the provision of school meals is atelling sign that this socialization experi-ence is far from trivial.

The ground reality

Unfortunately, none of the PROBE stateshave actually introduced school meals. Asa convenient substitute, these states runa scheme of ‘dry rations’, wherebychildren receive monthly grain rations (3kgs per child) instead of cooked food. Therations are intended for children with atleast 80 per cent attendance the previousmonth, but in practice most teachersdistribute the ration to all enrolled children.And it is easy to understand why they

should do so, if only because the officialselection criterion is likely to be sociallyunacceptable in most places. In placeswhere teachers did try to ‘weed out’ irregu-lar children, bitter quarrels with parentsoften took place.

The ‘dry rations’ arrangement obviouslydefeats much of the purpose of the school-meal programme. As far as the incentiveargument is concerned, the defect of thisarrangement is to reward enrolment ratherthan attendance. While dry rations doseem to boost enrolment, their effect onattendance is likely to be much weaker. Interms of the nutrition and socializationarguments, dry rations are worthless.

A further problem is that even thepromised monthly rations often fail tomaterialize. In large parts of Bihar, no foodwas released in 1996; supply failures anddelays were also noted in a majority ofschools in the other states. In many areas,monthly rations have been replaced withquarterly rations, which are likely to beeven less effective in encouraging regularschool attendance. And when food rationsare actually distributed, it is usually at theend of a long chain of corruption and redtape. While the standard entitlement isthree kilogrammes per child per month,many parents complain that they receivemuch less than that. We note in passingthat the teacher who volunteered a bribeto the PROBE investigators (see p.61)offered a sack of grain from the dry-rationsscheme.

‘The national school-meal programmeis a good example of how a well-

intentioned intervention degeneratesinto a farce due to bureaucratic apathy

and corruption’.

(A district collector, posted in Bihar.)

To be fair to the government, the ‘dryrations’ arrangement was explicitly men-tioned in the programme guidelines as apermissible interim measure. However,mid-day meals were to be organized withintwo years of the introduction of the pro-gramme in mid-1995. To this day (mid-1998), none of the PROBE states havemoved beyond dry rations (except in speci-fic areas, under other schemes). Biharhas even moved in the opposite direction,discontinuing the programme rather thantrying to improve it. There and elsewhere,one senses a lack of conviction in this ini-tiative, which suggests political gimmickrymore than considered planning.

Beyond dry rations

Implementing a genuine school-mealprogramme is an organizational chal-lenge. For instance, it is essential to makesure that a separate helper is available toprepare and serve the meals, rather thanlet this burden fall on the slendershoulders of school teachers. As it is, the

Recent Developments

96

monthly distribution of dry rations is adisruption (see p. 88); if school meals leadto further chaos in the classroom, theycould do more harm than good. Similarly,reliable arrangements are needed for thetimely release of food quotas, or for localfood purchases — it is impossible toorganize a regular school meal if the supplyof food is erratic.

To say that the PROBE states can takethis organizational challenge in their stridewould be wishful thinking. However, thechallenge has been successfully faced invarious contexts, not only in ‘forward’states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu(where mid-day meals are a standardfeature of government schools), but alsoin less likely places such as Gujarat andsome tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.There is a strong case for trying to extendthese positive experiences to other areas,especially the poorer ones where hungeris endemic. Indeed, the rewards of aneffective school-meal programme arelikely to be large. Judging from our earlieranalysis of schooling decisions (chapter3), and from available experiences, schoolmeals could go a long way towardsmopping up the residual parental reluc-tance to send children to school. Thisapplies particularly to girls: as we saw,parents are not generally opposed tofemale education, but they are reluctant topay for it. School meals could make a bigdifference here, by reducing the privatecosts of schooling.

8.2. Shiksha Karmis

The concept

In recent years, shiksha karmis havebecome popular with various stategovernments. The term ‘shiksha karmi’is used here in a broad sense, to refer tovarious kinds of para-teachers hired bystate governments to supplement theregular teaching staff. In HimachalPradesh, for instance, ‘voluntary teachers’are hired at about half the salary of aregular teacher and posted in under-staffed schools, with the prospect ofgetting a regular post after ten years ofservice. Shiksha karmis in Madhya

The Bihar government’s meal scheme in

village schools involves no mid-day meal.

It is beyond the capacity of the system to

feed every child, every day. What takes

place instead is the distribution of wheat

every few months. And it has rapidly

become the main, if not the only reason

why children are registered in the school.

In our local primary school there are at

least 150 children registered, from two-

year-olds to 12-year-olds, but on most

days there’s only 20-25 hanging aimlessly

around. They play in the verandah, in

and out of the bare school rooms while

the teachers chat among themselves...

When I first took my son for admission

about a year ago, I sat with him for the

first few days. Few children could write

their own names, let alone construct

whole sentences or words, after attending

the school for two years. The industrious

children copied the alphabet onto broken

bits of slate and wrote out numbers 1-100

in their books. Ten-year-olds couldn’t

say whether 23 was less than 33, or how

to write ‘ba’ or ‘ka’. ‘We’ve not been

taught that,’ they said. My son still

comes back with his ‘copy’ unopened, or

occasionally with the first few letters of

the alphabet written in. The children are

not divided into classes, no syllabus is

followed, and no effective teaching takes

place. Most children find better things to

do than attending school.

But when the word spreads around that

the wheat has come, guardians — men

that is — spring into action. The

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97

enterprising ones get their one- and

two-year-olds admitted, or get their

children admitted into two or three

schools. And good-for-nothings who

have not got their two- and three-year-

olds admitted get rebuked by their

wives...The days leading up to the big

day see schools bursting at the seams,

and a sense of purpose infects

everyone.

On distribution day — D day — all

pretence of teaching is abandoned.

Village elders turn out in full force and

all three teachers arrive, almost on time.

Men bring their lathis since fighting

broke out last time over dispensing the

booty and grandmothers bring sacks to

carry the wheat their malnourished

grandchildren cannot possibly carry.

Passers-by stop and watch the scene

and the peanut-seller comes along to

sell his wares. The whole process

takes the entire day, children whimper

and moan with hunger, adults argue

and tempers get frayed in the mid-day

heat, but no one goes away until their

bag is filled.

For a few days after D-day many

families happily eat ‘sarkari’ rotis and

most children stop going to school

completely, preferring to play in the

mud, fish in the pond or are given work

to do.

The scheme has as much to do with

education as it has to do with

malnutrition but no family will be

fighting about that.

Scramble For the Incentive — Enrol All

Excerpts from ‘Boys and Girls Come Out to Play’ in The Statesman (24 June 1997).

Pradesh have a similar status, with somenotable differences: they act mainly assubstitutes for regular teachers in remoteareas, often run schools on their own, earntiny salaries, have low qualifications, andare appointed by local bodies. Rajasthan,pioneer of the shiksha karmi idea, followsan intermediate model. Non-governmentorganizations (NGOs) also employ shik-sha karmis in various regions, but this isnot the focus of this section — NGOs arediscussed further on.

First-hand observations from the PROBEsurvey suggest that, despite their lowformal qualifications and salaries, shik-sha karmis sometimes (though not al-ways) work distinctly harder than regular

TWO SHIKSHA KARMIS

Sarwana is a predominantly Gujjar village of Ujjain district (M.P.). It is quite remote— 3 kms from a paved road and 6 kms from the nearest bus stop. A teacherappointed earlier never joined duty at all. Now the primary school does have ateacher, but he lives 19 kms away and is very irregular. So is the teacher appointedin Kari, a remote tribal village of Siddhi district (M.P.).

Shiksha karmis have been appointed in both Sarwana and Kari, to work with theregular teachers. When the PROBE investigators arrived, the regular teachers wereabsent in both cases but the shiksha karmis were present and teaching. For theirefforts, they earn a meagre Rs 800 per month — a fraction of the salary of theregular teachers.

The Sarwana shiksha karmi is the sarpanch’s brother-in-law. He lives, for the mostpart, in the nearest town of Kachrod (12 kms away), where he is studying for hisBA. He is quite contemptuous of the Gujjars and their desire or ability to acquireeducation. Although he is ‘12th pass’, he has had no training, either pre-service orin-service. Not surprisingly, the children had made little or no progress.

The shiksha karmi in Kari is struggling against great odds. Kari is predominantlyinhabited by poor tribals (Gonds and Kols). When the PROBE investigatorsarrived, around 30 children were gathered under a ber tree. Some of them werewriting, others were listening to the instructor. The children, all first-generationlearners, seemed to be of widely differing ages. As they worked they casuallypicked up and ate the ripe ber fruit scattered under the tree.

All the children in this new school are in the same class. The instructor says that itis hard to teach older children the class-1 material, but it has to be done. He alsofinds commuting difficult (he lives 9 kms away and has to walk and cycle to theschool over rough terrain). The school has no shelter; the community is keen toprovide shelter and facilities to the school, but this has yet to be done. If noarrangement is made for shelter before the monsoon, the school will have to beclosed.

teachers. This can be explained in diff-erent ways. If you ask parents, many ofthem will immediately tell you that regularteachers are comparatively easy-goingbecause they have permanent jobs andassured salaries. Shiksha karmis, fortheir part, are more accountable: a goodteaching performance means keeping thejob, and perhaps even the prospect ofbeing ‘regularized’ in the future. Someshiksha karmis stated quite frankly thattheir overriding hope was to becomeregular teachers, so that they could relaxever after. In cases where shiksha karmisare recruited within the village, account-ability to the community may also play arole, though in general we found no evi-dence that teachers posted in their ownvillage perform better than others.

In some circumstances, another reasonfor the better performance of shikshakarmis (if real) is that they are carefullyselected, trained and supported. Thisoften happens in the context of NGO-managed programmes, though it is muchless common when shiksha karmis aregovernment appointees. The other sideof the same coin is that, when shikshakarmis are left to their own devices, withouta minimal support and accountabilitystructure, they can be extremely slack. Thishas happened on a large scale in the gov-ernment’s ‘non-formal education centres’,as will be seen below.

Pros and cons

Shiksha karmis are potentially useful asa temporary, low-cost supplement to theregular teaching staff. This practice, how-ever, also has several dangers. First, thereis an obvious issue of equity betweenregular teachers and shiksha karmis. Thelatter are often treated as convenientunderlings, and deeply resent their inferiorstatus and (especially) low pay vis-à-visregular teachers. Dual hiring policies canalso be challenged in court (on thegrounds of ‘equal pay for equal work’),and indeed legal entanglements havealready raised their ugly head in severalstates.

Second, linked with the equity issue isthat of sustainability. As shiksha karmisget politically organized, their demands forregular posts become harder to resist. Iftheir integration in the regular teaching staffis done in a coherent and planned manner,as seems to be the case in Himachal Pra-desh, regularization is not necessarily abad thing: ten years of active service,together with adequate educational quali-fications, may be as good a training as ateacher is likely to get otherwise. On theother hand, if poorly-selected and poorly-trained shiksha karmis are hastily regu-larized through sheer political pressure,they may end up weakening rather thanstrengthening the teaching cadre. Thiswould also defeat the main purpose ofthe shiksha karmi approach (as perceivedby state governments), namely to appointadditional teachers at low cost.

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98

Abdication ?

‘In remote and inaccessible villages,often no teacher would come to teach.

The primary school building,dilapidated and forlorn, would lie in

wait... To tackle the chronic problem ofteacher absenteeism, a novel idea wasgenerated... The crucial innovation inthis, the Shiksha Karmi Project, is theselection of two ordinary villagers, to

replace the (formally qualified butchronically absent) primary school

teacher. These two ordinary villagerswould henceforth be responsible for

teaching all the children of theirvillage.’

Department of Education, 1993:Education for All: The Indian Scene,

p.31; emphasis added.

Third, the shiksha karmi approachinvolves a potential risk of institutionalizeddualism in the schooling system. Thisissue may not arise when shiksha karmisare posted as auxiliary teachers in themainstream schools, and are spreadevenly throughout the schooling system.In practice, however, shiksha karmis tendto be posted in areas where regularteachers are reluctant to go, such as tribalareas or ‘backward’ villages. In thesedeprived areas, shiksha karmis are usedas low-cost substitutes for non-performing teachers, often managingentire schools on their own. This policytends to be supported by regular teachers,who are thereby more likely to be posted

in attractive areas. The outcome is a pat-tern where deprived children are taughtby poorly-qualified, low-paid shikshakarmis while those from privilegedfamilies are more likely to be taught by aregular teacher.

How much this matters depends onwhether shiksha karmis can be expectedto impart education of the same quality asregular teachers. In principle, this is notimpossible, if shiksha karmis make upfor their lower qualifications throughgreater effort. Even then, it is not clearwhy low-cost teaching arrangementsshould be concentrated on the deprivedsections of the population. One answeris that this policy is really an admission ofthe failure to motivate regular teachers towork in deprived areas. That may be areality to live with in the short run, but long-run abdication on this front is a ques-tionable strategy.

To conclude, the pros and cons of shik-sha karmis depend a great deal on howthey are integrated in the schooling sys-tem. They certainly have something tocontribute as temporary auxiliaries inunder-staffed schools, but the success ofthis approach calls for resisting variouspitfalls, especially political pressures touse shiksha karmis as permanent substi-tutes for regular teachers in deprivedareas.

8.3. AlternativeSchooling

The shiksha karmi phenomenon can beseen as part of a broader trend of increas-ing reliance on ‘alternative schooling’ as

a means of reaching under-privileged children andachieving universal ele-mentary education. The appro-priate role of alternativeschooling (sometimes de-scribed as ‘non-formal school-ing’) is one of the most difficultissues of education policytoday.

At the outset, it is helpful tomake a distinction between‘alternative schooling’ and

‘alternative education’. The former refersto the creation of parallel schoolingfacilities for deprived children. The latteris concerned with the need for innovativepedagogy, focusing for instance oncomprehension and personal develop-ment rather than on the accumulation ofknowledge. As we saw in chapter 6, thecase for this type of pedagogicalimprovement is overwhelming. As thingsstand, teaching methods are mercilesslystultifying, and it is a miracle that childrensurvive them without entirely losing theircreative abilities and independence ofmind. The need for radical pedagogicalchange, however, applies throughout theschooling system (even in privilegedurban schools), and not to deprivedchildren alone. In that sense, the need forpromoting alternative education is onlytangentially related to the case for creatingalternative schooling facilities for deprivedchildren. Our concern here is with thelatter.

Non-formal education

centres

The first generation of alternativeschooling facilities under governmentauspices consisted of a network of ‘non-formal education centres’ (NFE centresfor short) sponsored by the centralgovernment. Officiallly, there are 2.4 lakhNFE centres in India, i.e. one for every othervillage or so. Evaluation studies, however,indicate that a large proportion of theseNFE centres are non-functional. This isconfirmed by the PROBE survey: in the 188sample villages located in the four PROBEstates, we found fewer than 10 functionalNFE centres (one village had as many asnine NFE centres, all non-functional). Evenin the ‘functional’ centres, the level ofteaching activity was minimal. So muchso that, in many cases, local residentsand even school teachers were unawareof their existence. In 1,221 samplehouseholds, the survey found only twochildren who were actually enrolled in anNFE centre. And the survey did notuncover a single case of a child who had‘graduated’ from a non-formal educationcentre to a formal school, even though oneof the main goals of NFE centres isprecisely to make this possible.

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Notwithstanding these and other clearindications of the failure of the pro-gramme, the creation of scores of addi-tional NFE centres continues unabated —the current target is 3.5 lakhs. As a top-level bureaucrat from the Department ofEducation candidly put it at a recent semi-nar in Delhi, ‘non-formal education sur-vives because it is a profitable industry’.

Asking why these NFE centres havefailed is, in a sense, asking the wrongquestion. It is more pertinent to ask howthey were expected to function in the firstplace. The centrally-sponsored NFEcentres replicate all the operational prob-lems of the formal schooling system: lackof supervision, inadequate infrastructure,absence of community participation, debi-litating curriculum, to name a few. How,then, are NFE centres supposed tosucceed where the formal schoolingsystem has failed?

Supplement orsubstitute?

The NFE fiasco is not a final verdict onthe principle of alternative schooling. Infact, some non-government organizationshave achieved great successes in thisfield, based on adequate support andaccountability structures. Inspired by

A FUNCTIONING NFE CENTRE

Impressions of a member of the PROBE team :

Kanta was still fresh in my mind when I reached the ‘non-formal education centre’in Salemabad (Ajmer, Rajasthan). Ten-year old Kanta cannot go to regular school.While her mother and father are doing wage labour during the day, she looks afterher three siblings. Non-formal education centres are meant for children like her.

‘And what is this letter?’ asked the young NFE instructor. He struggled to get ananswer from the 8-10 girls seated outside his hut at dusk. The letters on the roll-top blackboard were barely visible in the half-light. A kerosene lamp flickeredhelpfully, sharing its rays between the kitchen space inside the hut and the classoutside. As the darkness gathered, the warrior against illiteracy gave up and toldhis pupils to copy from the board. Straining to make out the shapes of the letters,the girls complied quietly.

The village had a second NFE centre, and I asked to see it. ‘That one is usuallyclosed,’ someone volunteered. ‘Anyway, the path isn’t safe. Plenty of snakes.’

A bit difficult for Kanta, I mused. Either you need very powerful spectacles or youneed stilts.

these experiences, state governmentshave initiated new programmes of altern-ative schooling, with varying success. Insome states, alternative schooling isincreasingly considered as the key touniversal elementary education.

The case for alternative schooling, how-ever, has to be carefully assessed incontext. In particular, it is important toenquire whether alternative schooling faci-lities respond to a genuine need for

learning opportunities outside formalschools, as opposed to providing a con-venient opportunity to dispense withformal schooling for other reasons. Thelatter can happen in at least two ways.First, the local school may have poorteaching standards, leading parents tosend their children to an alternativeschooling facility even though their firstchoice would be a good school. Second,the local school may function, yet parentsmay be tempted to send some of theirchildren to alternative schooling centresto reduce the costs, or simply because itis convenient to keep them at home formost of the day. The danger is especiallyreal for girls.

One possible example of genuine needarises in the case of working children forwhom school timings are not suitable. Inthe light of our earlier findings, however,the proportion of such children may wellbe much smaller than is commonly as-sumed (see chapters 2 and 3). For asignificant proportion of children, schooltimings do clash with work activities duringthe peak agricultural season, but this isprobably better dealt with by adjusting theschool calendar (say on a district-wisebasis, as in Himachal Pradesh) than bycreating parallel schooling facilities forthese children. Also, child labour is notan immutable phenomenon, and one ofthe arguments for the universalization of

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Below : Universalizing elementary education could rescue this child (see Box, p. 101).

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elementary education is precisely toliberate children from the burden ofexcessive work. This is not to deny thatalternative schooling facilities may have ashort-term role in specific situations wherechild labour is both widespread and diffi-cult to eliminate.

A related issue is whether alternativeschooling facilities are provided as atemporary supplement to the mainstreamschools, or as a permanent substitute.Providing special learning facilities fordrop-out children, for instance, is certainlya useful thing. So is posting a shikshakarmi in an under-staffed school, as aprovisional arrangement. But it is quiteanother matter to argue that alternativeschooling facilities provide an adequatelong-term substitute for formal schools.

In specific situations, there may be a casefor setting up alternative schooling faci-lities of a permanent nature. In someareas, for instance, there is a real problemof population dispersion in tiny hamlets,where a formal school is not viable. Thisis one situation where alternative school-ing facilities may have a lasting role. Note,however, that the proportion of the ruralpopulation living in hamlets of less than300 persons (a reasonable cut-off for theviability of a formal school), and more thanone kilometre away from the nearestschool, is below 3 per cent. Hence, thisargument for alternative schooling faci-lities applies only to a tiny fraction of thepopulation, and should not be confusedwith a general case for alternativeschooling.

In a broad sense, all out-of-school children must beconsidered child labourers: if they are not in the work-forcetoday, they will join it tomorrow.

All evidence from the field indicates that children who areworking from a young age burn themselves out by the timethey are 30 or 35 years old. They have not had any educationworth the name, and their health is severely impaired. Oftenthey are heavily in debt. The circumstances of unemployment(if not unemployability), combined with their inferior positionin the hierarchy of caste and class, predispose them toputting their own children to work. And so the downwardspiral of poverty and exploitation wends its way.

Free and compulsory education is a necessary, if notsufficient condition, for the elimination of child labour. Theword ‘compulsory’ worries many: Will it mean harassment ofpoor parents if they don’t send their children to school? Willthey have to suffer economic hardship if they do send them?It should be remembered though that all societies which haveintroduced compulsory education have combined schoolingwith work for some time, but the priority has been educationfirst and work later — not the other way around.

The experience of NGOs, from MV Foundation in Rangareddydistrict, Andhra Pradesh (see section 8.5) to CREDA in

Mirzapur district (Uttar Pradesh), suggests that the poorest ofthe poor are interested in the education of their children andare even willing to contribute to it. In the carpet-weaving beltof Bhadohi, Mirzapur district, children themselves are makinglists of all out-of-school children to enable CREDA to putpressure on the administration to provide schools. In bothdistricts, the authorities have been inundated with demands foradmission into schools.

The NGOs that have succeeded in eliminating child labour arethose that believe in mainstreaming children into the formalschool system and not marginalizing them further through‘non-formal education’ for a couple of hours at night bycandle-light. It is these NGOs which have mobilized parents,children, communities, employers and government officials toget children out of work and into school. These NGOs havesearched for community solutions instead of standing aloof inthe expectation of future state action. This changing ofmindsets has to start with all of us who are forever findingreasons and explanations for why the poor need to send theirchildren to work and not to school. The poor are ready to makeall the necessary sacrifices to give their children a chance inthe future — but are we ready to share the shrinking cake ofopportunities with others who are more disadvantaged?

Neera Burra.

If we raise these questions, it is not dueto any inherent objection to alternativeschooling facilities. Their potential hasbeen well demonstrated in various con-texts, and there are many wonderful ex-amples of how alternative schooling hasopened up new opportunities for deprivedchildren (for an example, see p. 110). Theissue is that a real dilemma can arisebetween the short-term need for altern-ative schooling facilities and the long-termgoal of integrating all children in a commonschooling system. This is particularly soat a time when state governments areshort of funds, and tempted to usealternative schooling as a low-cost short-cut to universal elementary education.The way ahead is not to abandonalternative schooling, but to promote it withcircumspection.

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CHILD LABOUR AND ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

8.4. PrivateSchooling

Private schooling is often thought to beconfined to urban areas, but this is not thecase. In many of the PROBE villages, pri-vate schools are a flourishing business,which presents both opportunities anddangers.

Parental views on privateschools

Two conditions are favourable to theemergence of private schools in a specificarea: (1) the breakdown of governmentschools, and (2) parental ability to pay.Often, the former is more decisive thanthe latter. In rural Himachal Pradesh, forinstance, there is a good deal of purchas-ing power, but the government schoolsfunction well, so that there are few privateschools. In central Bihar, by contrast,poverty is endemic, yet private schools canbe found in many villages (see p. 140)due to the dysfunctional state of govern-ment schools. When asked why a privateschool had been opened in the village,private-school teachers usually men-tioned either the absence of a governmentschool or its malfunctioning.

teaching activity. This is confirmed by thePROBE survey: in most of the privateschools we visited, there was feverishclassroom activity. As a rule, they placeda visible emphasis on discipline andinstruction.

Most parents stated that, if the costs ofsending a child to a government andprivate school were the same, they wouldrather send their children to a privateschool. The reason, almost invariably, isthat they are dissatisfied with the func-tioning of the local government school. Inpractice, of course, the costs are higherfor private schools, keeping these schoolsout of reach of many parents even when aprivate school is physically available in ornear the village.

Below : A girl in a private school in a PROBE

village. Private-school enrolment showed a

sharp bias against girls. Among the PROBE sample households,18 per cent of school-going children areenrolled in private schools, rising to 36per cent in Uttar Pradesh. In the otherstates, this proportion ranges from 5 to 11per cent. The finding that private schoolingis most widespread in Uttar Pradesh isconsistent with an earlier survey by theNational Council of Applied EconomicResearch. Half of the children enrolled inprivate schools go to school outside theirown village (compared with 11 per centamong those enrolled in governmentschools). There is a sharp gender bias inprivate schools, where barely one-quarterof the pupils are girls.

As parents see it, the main advantage ofprivate schools is that, being moreaccountable, they have higher levels of

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Having said this, it would be a mistake tothink that private schooling is restricted toprivileged families. Even among poorfamilies and disadvantaged communities,one finds parents who make great sacri-fices to send some or all of their childrento private schools, so disillusioned arethey with government schools. AmongPROBE children enrolled in privateschools, one-fifth came from familieswhere casual labour was one of the mainoccupations, and over one-half belongedto a ‘scheduled caste’ (14 per cent) or‘other backward caste’ (39 per cent).Some poor families concentrate theirefforts on sending one child (usually a boy)to a private school, the others being sentto government schools or kept at home.The fact that parents in poor families oftenmake enormous sacrifices to send theirchildren to private schools confirms theirhigh motivation for education. It alsoreinforces another point discussed inchapter 3, namely that even poor parentsaspire to some kind of quality educationfor their children.

Characteristics ofprivate schools

Private schools are of many differentkinds, even within rural areas. Startingwith official categories, private schoolsmay be ‘recognized’ or ‘unrecognized’.Unrecognized private schools receive nostate support and are not allowed to issuecertificates. Recognized private schoolsmay be ‘aided’ or ‘unaided’. In aidedschools (there are very few in rural areasof the PROBE states), teachers’ salariesare paid by the government. All recognizedschools, aided or unaided, are supervisedby the government and allowed to issuecertificates. In the PROBE state’s 188sample villages, we identified 41 privateschools, of which 26 were unrecognized,13 were recognized but unaided, and only2 were aided. Most likely, these figuresinvolve some undercounting (especiallyof unrecognized schools), as privateschools tend to be located in the largervillages where their presence is ofteninconspicuous.

Even within these three official cate-gories, there are wide variations between

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schools in terms of the services provided,level of fees, facilities available, and soon. Some private schools are little morethan ‘quack’ coaching centres, run in ashack or open space by some un-employed educated youth. Others havemodern facilities, charge expensive fees,and try to project the image of a modelschool. In so far as a general pictureemerges, it includes the followingfeatures:

Premises: The premises of privateschools in the sample villages are, in mostcases, simple but functional. Often theydo no better than government schools interms of availability of various facilities(e.g. classrooms and blackboards), butthe utilization of these facilities tends tobe more efficient. About half of the private-school buildings, for instance, did not needany repair. Many private schools evenmanage to create some kind of learningenvironment with the simple means avail-able to them. But the simplest ‘unrecog-nized’ private schools have an environ-ment even worse than most governmentschools, with poky rooms, plenty of filth,no teaching aids and — in five cases —not a single blackboard.

Teachers: Private-school teachers tend tobelong to privileged castes, with an evena lower proportion of women than ingovernment schools. Their formal educa-

English is the big selling point of private

schools. ‘Why should they pay us Rs 25/- per

month if we don’t give them something

special,’ said one private-school teacher.

After the class;

infrastructure in

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private schools

is often not

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infrastructure

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tional qualifications are similar to thoseof government teachers, but most of them(80 per cent) are untrained. The informalunrecognized schools often hire‘teachers’ with only the bare minimum ofqualifications (in two cases, they hadstudied only upto class 8). Private-schoolteachers also receive very low salaries —often less than one-fifth of the salary of agovernment teacher with similar teachingresponsibilities. On the positive side, pri-vate schools have a distinctly higherteacher-pupil ratio than governmentschools.

Teaching methods: On the whole, teachingmethods are not very different in privateand government schools. In both cases,the main emphasis is on crude methodssuch as reciting numbers, memorizingexercises, and copying from textbooks.The main difference is the closer moni-toring of children in private schools.Class-1 children, much neglected in gov-ernment schools (see chapter 4), receiveclose attention in private schools, perhapsbecause private-school teachers are keento retain their ‘clients’, and know that aneglected class-1 child can easily dropout. Multi-grade teaching is common inboth cases, but the range of grades andnumber of children simultaneously taughtare usually smaller in private schools,thanks to their better teacher-pupil ratios.Another notable difference is the greateremphasis on order and discipline in pri-vate schools, which tends to be muchappreciated by the parents, thoughchildren may differ.

English medium: English-mediuminstruction is a big selling point of private

schools. Among the 41 private schoolssurveyed, 17 were ‘English-medium’schools, and most of the others hadEnglish as a subject. But here again, thereis a great deal of variation in the credibilityof English instruction, with teachers them-selves knowing little more than a fewsentences of English in some of the un-recognized schools. Most parents, alas,cannot tell the difference.

Attendance: Aside from high levels ofclassroom activity, private schools havehigh attendance rates — understandablyso since parents want something in returnfor their fees. On average, 84 per cent ofthe children enrolled were present at thetime of the PROBE survey; a few privateschools even had all enrolled childrenpresent, a situation not found in govern-ment schools.

Parental support: Generally, the rapportbetween parents and teachers is moreconstructive in private schools than ingovernment schools. In general, parentscooperate in sending children to schoolregularly, and at least a third of the privateschools said the parents had actuallycontributed to school needs (e.g. by pro-viding hay for the roof, labour to improvethe school building, or simple classroomfurniture). In Bakhunkhola (Almora, U.P.),the private school reported that it wouldnever have been able to run in such a poorvillage without the cooperation of theparents. Only 3 out of 41 private schoolshad major complaints, mainly aboutparental indifference and delays in thepayment of fees. There seems to be anelement of mutuality in teacher-parentrelations in private schools, whereby

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parents are willing to help because theschool is actually looking after theirchildren.

In all these respects, recognized schoolstend to achieve higher standards thanunrecognized schools. The worst amongthe latter tend to be as problematic as gov-ernment schools.

Opportunities anddangers

This picture of private schools may seemrelatively rosy. Their main achievement isa high level of classroom activity, reflectingsome accountability to the parents. Forthe same reason, they perform relativelywell on several other counts: better uti-lization of facilities, greater attention toyoung children, responsiveness ofteachers to parental complaints. Parents,for their part, actively support theirchildren’s studies, as they do not want thefees to be wasted.

Having said this, private schools (espe-cially the more informal ones) have someserious limitations. First, private school-ing remains out of reach of the vast ma-jority of poor parents, who cannot affordthe fees and other expenses. Informal pri-vate schools charge moderate fees, butnevertheless, the cost difference between

Most of the parents have little idea of whatgoes on in the classroom. They know thatteachers turn up on time, keep the childrenbusy, and maintain discipline, and in allthese respects private schools strike themas far superior to government schools.Even an inept teacher, however, can main-tain these appearances without impartingmuch education to the children. Benchesand desks can also make an impressionon parents, without necessarily meaningmuch in terms of quality of schooling. Thehollow claim of English instruction madeby many private schools is another illus-tration of this problem.

Third, private teachers have little reasonto promote the personal development ofthe children, to treat them with sensitivity,or to impart a sense of values. Their over-whelming objective is to cram the headsof the pupils, so that they may pass therelevant tests and examinations. To someextent this problem applies in governmentschools too, but at least in the latter casethere is a possibility of stimulating theinterest of teachers in alternative teachingprinciples and practices. Sports andgames, for instance, are observed insome government schools, but privateschools have no time for this, at least notin the PROBE villages. It is only when a

DIWAN SINGH’S JOY AND RUPPO’S PAIN

The 55-year-old scheduled-caste labourer whom we interviewed at Singapattivillage (Mathura, U.P.) apparently has great value for education. The family isspending Rs 1000/- annually on the education of little Diwan Singh, his grandson,in a private school. It is a luxury that the family can ill afford but given the sorrystate of the government school it is a necessary expense if Diwan Singh is to getany education at all. ‘Masterji bahut kam aatey hain,’ says his grandfatherruefully, ‘school hamesha bandh rehta hai’. (The teachers come very rarely. Theschool is always closed.) In fact, any one who can at all afford it and even a fewlike Diwan Singh’s family who can’t quite do so, have taken this step. DiwanSingh is in class 3, the most highly educated member in his family. We interviewedhim — he loves his school which has plenty of play equipment. His teacherteaches well, though sometimes Diwan Singh does get a beating. The little boyseems excited about his studies and is looking forward to getting a job in thefuture — the bright lights of the town beckon him. Ruppo, his sister, does not seethis bright future. She has to be content with the local government school. Herplight is not uncommon, for private-school enrolment shows a sharp bias in termsof gender as well as class.

government and private schooling issubstantial in the eyes of poor parents.Given that many of them find even govern-ment schooling to be expensive, it is notsurprising that children enrolled in privateschools come mainly from better-offfamilies.

Second, private schools often takeadvantage of the vulnerability of parents.

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strong parental demand develops forthese aspects of schooling (as incomeand education levels in the communityincrease) that private schools pay attentionto them.

Last but not least, the expansion ofprivate schools carries a real danger offurther undermining the governmentschooling system. When parents from arelatively privileged background withdrawtheir children from government schoolsto put them in a private school, there isthat much less parental pressure to im-prove government schools. This scenariomay lead to a very divisive pattern ofschooling opportunities, with better-offparents sending their children to privateschools while poorer parents are left tocope with non-functional governmentschools. Indeed, these divisive patternsare already conspicuous in many areas.

8.5. NGO Initiatives

The role of NGOs

The work of non-government organ-izations (NGOs) is not the main focus ofthis report, for two reasons. First, plentyof material on this is available elsewhere.Second, very few villages in the PROBEstates (6 out of 188 sample villages) hadschooling facilities run by NGOs. The lastpoint is worth noting, because the publicvisibility of NGOs sometimes gives thefalse impression that they are everywhere.Following on that, and on the assumptionthat most NGOs are doing good work,there is a tendency to expect a great dealfrom them. Government documents, inparticular, increasingly refer to NGOs (orto partnership with NGOs) as one of thecrucial institutional resources to be tappedin order to achieve universal elementaryeducation. Sometimes they are even seenas a viable, low-cost ‘alternative’ to govern-ment schools. Against this background,it is important to recognize that, as thingsstand, NGOs actually play a relativelyminor role in the education system as awhole.

This remark does not detract from theimmense value of their work. Dedicated

NGOs have done wonderful things inspecific areas, and their pioneering ini-tiatives have also drawn attention to newmodels of classroom pedagogy, teachertraining, school management, and so on.Further, NGOs can play a crucial advocacyrole, and in helping to foster public parti-cipation in schooling matters.

In this section, we present threeillustrations of this type of work, based onsecondary sources. The organizationsthat feature in these examples (Eklavya inMadhya Pradesh, Lok Jumbish in Raj-asthan, and MV Foundation in AndhraPradesh) have one thing in common,namely a commitment to the univer-salization of elementary education in acommon schooling system. Their workis not a substitute for government schools;rather, it tries to support them and toensure that deprived children are able tojoin the same schools as other children.

The summaries below are based onmaterial supplied by the organizationsconcerned, first-hand observation of someof their projects, and independent evalu-ation reports. We have tried our best to befair and accurate.

Eklavya: Improvingclassroom processes

Eklavya, an NGO involved in primaryeducation for around 20 years, grew outof the Hoshangabad Science TeachingProgramme. The programme faced greatproblems in the teaching of science atmiddle-school level due to poor studentpreparedness at the primary level in bothlanguage and mathematics. They had tointroduce some chapters on basic math-ematics like place-value, decimals andmeasurement: they had found that the onlyskill that most children seemed to havemastered at the end of class 5 was simpleaddition without carry-over. Many childrenat the end of class 5 would still add 57and 75 like this :

5 7

+7 5

12 12

Both, multiplication and division weretaken as addition by class-5 students, andsums involving fractions and decimalswere rarely attempted. Careful obser-vation faulted a child-unfriendly classroomas well as curriculum for this situation.The need was felt to focus more on theprimary level.

This was the genesis of Eklavya’s effortto develop a new package of teaching-learning materials for classes 1-5. Forthree years, Eklavya members interactedwith children and teachers in a few ruralprimary schools. They observed the be-haviour of the children, their play, theirfavourite stories and poems, their inter-action among friends. All this became thebase for innovations in textbooks, teachingaids, classroom activities and teachertraining. Teachers were the natural alliesof Eklavya in this process and participatedin developing materials as well as in usingthem. The expertise of education pro-fessionals was also used as a resource.

Since Eklavya textbooks are the productof interaction with rural children in MadhyaPradesh, textbooks are contextualized toreflect the experience of these children(see pp. 73-4). There is no text for the firsthalf of class 1 so that the child can freelyuse the local language and slowly beginto feel at home with the standard Hindispoken in school. In every way the Eklavyaclassroom is meant to be a non-threaten-ing space. An Eklavya member narrateshow the children in a remote villageschool were too scared to answer thequestions put by the visiting resource per-son, Peepraj Massab. But he persistedand cajoled. He used the few words ofKorku (their own language) that he knew.An hour later, the children were laughingand talking freely to Peepraj Massab.

The Eklavya package emphasizes activeclassrooms with confident and articulatechildren who enjoy their tasks. Teachersare encouraged to be free of the rigidity offixed time for learning and adapt the paceto the learners. They are also encouragedto relate the subject matter to the environ-ment of the children. The language in text-books is simple and close to commonspeech, not formal and high-flown.Teaching aids include stones, twigs, and

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sand found around the classroom, as alsothe children’s own local songs andpoems.

Eklavya feels heartened by the efforts ofteachers who are able to assimilatechildren into classroom activities. Whenthe Eklavya programme began at the slumschool at Shukrawara, Saroj Behenji, theteacher, found children peeping in fromtime to time. These were drop-outs whospent most of their time playing cardsoutside the school. They were attractedby the unusual activities in the classroom.Saroj Behenji invited them in, telling themthat there were different card games inthis school. When they joined the classshe treated them just like the others. Infact, she gave them more responsibilitiesas they were older. These children grewup to be fine students, passing the class-5 examination near the top of the class.

The first textbook was ready in 1987, andintroduced in seven schools. The processof interaction and experimentationcontinued. The complete package forclasses 1-5 (Khushi Khushi), along withsupplementary classroom material anda system for teacher support and training,was ready by 1993-4. The experience of

Eklavya in 25 schools was the basis ofthe trialling programme taken up byEklavya, Shikshak Samakhya and theMadhya Pradesh SCERT (State Councilof Educational Research and Training).Each developed a comprehensive pro-gramme for quality improvement in primaryschools, and then collaborated to producea package for quality improvement first in16 districts and then across the wholestate.

In this process, most of the principles onwhich Eklavya programmes are based(such as the involvement of children andteachers in curriculum and materialdevelopment, direct interaction of pro-fessionals at the field level and theinstitution of a process of feedback), havebecome part and parcel of the processesof curriculum development. This hasprovided the base for interactive pro-cesses to take root in primary education.Incorporation of a few units from KhushiKhushi was a supplementary fallout.Thepartnership between the government ofMadhya Pradesh and the HSTP (Ho-shangabad Science Teaching Project) whichbegan in a small way 25 years ago is now allset to influence the teaching in every primaryclassroom in the state. Nearly 5,000 teachers,

principals, trainers and administrators havebeen involved in the work at one time or theother.

Lok Jumbish:Democratizingeducational management

Lok Jumbish began with a bold vision: totransform the educational scenario inRajasthan. Initiated in 1992, it is supportedby Sida, the Government of India and theGovernment of Rajasthan (funded by thethree in the ratio 3:2:1).

One of the main challenges faced by LokJumbish was to bring the village comm-unity, especially women, into the educa-tional orbit. Another significant challengewas to devise a sound educational man-agement system which would avoid therigidities and inefficiencies highlighted inchapter 7.

The technique of ‘school mapping’ is LokJumbish’s special contribution to the taskof mobilizing people for education. Thisbegins with LJ workers (or a local NGO)building a rapport with members of thecommunity who are interested in im-proving education standards in the village.These members, called the prerak dal(inspirational group), are given a shorttraining for the task of mapping, which theyundertake along with the LJ workers orthe NGO. School mapping refers to theexercise of depicting every household inthe village visually on a simple map. Smallsymbols indicate the schooling status ofevery household member in the 5-14 agegroup. The whole exercise is an occasionfor interacting with the community. Whenthe map is ready it is possible to see whichhouseholds need special help, and todiscuss the schooling facilities requiredin the village. The prerak dal and the localcommunity draw up a set of proposalsbased on the mapping data. The pro-posals usually relate to two issues: theneed for new schools and non-formalcentres and the improvement of the exist-ing ones. These proposals are sent to ablock-level committee which is the sanc-tioning authority.

Sturdy once again: a school building repaired by Lok Jumbish. The use of low-cost local

materials and innovative technologies, as well as transparent and participatory procedures, are

key features of Lok Jumbish.

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Thus, school mapping allows theordinary, even non-literate villager toparticipate in a field survey and makeproposals — a tremendous capacity-building exercise. Prompt follow-up tothese proposals further builds up the confi-dence of the community.

A long with school mapping, carefulmicro-planning at village level makes itpossible to monitor the participation ofevery child in primary education. The LJculture emphasizes a high degree ofautonomy and freedom at the block level.This has fostered a variety of innovativeinitiatives at the local level. For example,after two or three block officers spent amonth at the MV Foundation camps, theyproposed setting up residential camps forgirls in their own blocks. The initiative hasbeen so well received that there are nowsixteen such camps. Another example isKaman block in Bharatpur which has a

large Muslim population and where manyparents used to keep their children(especially girls) at home on the groundsthat schooling was not encouraged by themullahs. Here the block officer sought adialogue with the mullahs, and found thatthey had some valid points. They wereunsure of sending children to schools ofvery poor quality, and complained of discri-mination against Muslims on the part oflocal teachers. The mullahs also wantedUrdu to be included in the curriculum.Today 84 of the 120 villages have well-functioning schools which Muslimchildren attend in large numbers.Successes of this kind often lead tosimilar initiatives and experimentselsewhere, nurtured by Lok Jumbish’sprocess of continuous evaluation.

Lok Jumbish also stresses the empower-ment of women. Along with the prerakdal, suitable women are identified who

can lead the mahila samooh (women’sgroup) in the village and these womenbecome part of all LJ deliberations. It isLJ policy to recruit women workers: two-thirds of the LJ staff are women. Thereare special facilities for women and younggirls who want to educate themselves,but missed the chance. The two WRITEs(Women’s Residential Institute for Train-ing and Education), for example, havetrained many illiterate women. Many ofthem now work as anganwadi workers,NFE instructors, and so on. Several havejoined as Lok Jumbish staff.

The Lok Jumbish approach to ‘non-formal education’, called sahej shiksha,is quite different from the mainstreamNFE system which is more or less non-functional. The course runs for a full fiveyears, and the child, while free to learn athis or her own pace, is fully supported tillclass-5 level. Investment per NFE centre

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is around Rs 20,000/- per annum (aboutfive times as high as in government NFEcentres), and the centres and instructorsreceive close attention and support.

Lok Jumbish, of course, has its problemsand weaknesses. Though enrolment andretention have gone up, pupil achieve-ments in LJ schools have been modest.LJ’s impact on the mainstream schoolsystem has also fallen short of expecta-tions, an important issue since LJ is atemporary project. Even the goal of em-powering women has met with partialsuccess (one evaluation found that only aminority of mahila-samooh members inthe sample villages were active). On thewhole, the pace of LJ work has beenslower than was first envisaged. But thisdoes not detract from the value of whathas been achieved. As one independentevaluation report observes, the project hasdemonstrated ‘high sensitivity and a real-life tightrope walking ability’.

MV Foundation:Removing child labour

Few children of low-income families everwent to school in Shankarapally Mandal,a cluster of around 30 villages near Hyder-abad (Andhra Pradesh). Apart from

helping their parents at home and in thefields, many children were also employedin income-earning activities. Hordes oflittle girls could be seen in the kanakam-baram groves, harvesting the orangeflowers and stringing them into garlands.Scores of young boys worked as bondedlabourers on the large farms in the district.These children could not dream of school— their families were just too poor.

Since 1987, MV Foundation has beenworking to make this dream a reality. MVFdoes not encourage the compromises ofthe ‘non-formal education’ (NFE) system,where school timings are adjusted to suitworking children. It believes in breakingthe labouring cycle — the only way to re-move child labour is to send children backto school.

MVF has different strategies for differentage-groups. The simplest to tackle areyoung children between the ages of fiveand eight, who are often idle or just helptheir parents in small ways. Thesechildren are young enough to be easilyadmitted in a formal school, so the task isto convince parents that they should study,and to see that they are admitted. Theolder children, aged nine to fourteen, aremore difficult to tackle. Many of them arehard-core child labourers, already seenas economic assets by their parents.

For these children, the NFE strategy wastried out. But the centres were not popular.The children who did come made slowprogress — they were just too tired, andalso very irregular. The NFE centreattracted them only when it became a livelyand creative place where the little workerscould relax. The centre then became amotivational one, where children werepersuaded to join a residential ‘summercamp’. These summer camps are thecornerstone of MVF’s work.

Summer camps are held separately forgirls and boys, and vary in duration fromthree to nine months. Study timings arerigorous — 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. In the eveningthere are library sessions, reviewsessions and homework sessions. Thechildren are divided into various com-mittees to organize the day-to-day chores(cleaning utensils, sweeping, etc.). Theatmosphere at the camp is joyful in spiteof the hectic schedule. Beating is tabooand even a scolding can cause protest atthe review sessions. The children do notfeel threatened by the level of study: a goodexample is their first textbook. It is simplya list of thirty common words provided bythe children themselves. Song and dance,coins and matchsticks, folklore and pro-verbs are all used for the seriousbusiness of preparing the young learnersto join a formal school at the end of thecamp. Some of them join class 3, othersclass 4 and some even class 5.

The children, usually first-generationlearners, continue to be supported in theirlearning. They are admitted into social-welfare hostels. Their local school alsohas MVF volunteers, who activate thevillage community to ensure that theschool has adequate facilities and that theteachers are accountable. It is not un-usual to find two government teachersdrawing full salary, the MVF volunteers andtwo local volunteers (each getting Rs 800per month), all teaching in one school.This is only one of the strategies by whichMVF has succeeded in involving the com-munity and mobilizing committed localvolunteers — not as a parallel structurebut to reinforce the school system.

MVF seeks to make creative use of localresources. Its volunteers are idealistic

Freedom from labour : Former child labourers at a residential summer camp which will

enable them to enrol in school.

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MARUSHALAS IN WESTERN RAJASTHAN

The marushala (desert school) is an alternative schoolconceived by URMUL Trust — an NGO working in thedeserts of Western Rajasthan. The project began in 1992 andat present there are 6 marushalas.

Western Rajasthan has a low level of literacy, especiallyamong women. Pupil absenteeism peaks at the time ofseasonal migration to the Dhanis (newly-created hamlets inthe command area of the Indira Gandhi Canal), when manychildren work in the fields. By following the agriculturalcalendar, the marushala ensures that children are able tostudy while contributing to family labour. All the marushalasare located in places where no other school exists.

Children from the age of three are admitted to the marushala.However, they are taught only from the age of six. Pupils aretaught Hindi, mathematics and environmental science. Thesyllabus has been designed by Digantar — a Jaipur-basedNGO. Digantar also provides support in the form of regulartraining and evaluation of teachers. Compared to otherschools, the marushalas have plenty of teaching aids. Theteacher-pupil ratio is also much higher than in ordinaryschools.

The children in the marushalas set the work agenda. Thoughteachers prepare for the following day, they modify the planaccording to the preferences expressed by the children. Therelationship between children and teachers is one of

camaraderie. The children are trained not to accept anythingblindly, and encouraged to be curious and inquisitive. Theyare not burdened with homework every day. They are givenweekly homework, and the syllabus is designed to be easy forthem to comprehend.

Learning in marushalas takes place in a relaxed atmosphere.The children look forward to going to school, and often reachthere early. They stay long after the school hours are over,playing with other children. No fees are charged, but parentscontribute some cash voluntarily. There are no classes inmarushalas, but children are graded. The children move fromone grade to another depending on their pace of learning.They undergo tests every three months, and the tests areconducted as part of the normal school routine. No specialemphasis is laid on the tests, so that children do not dreadthem.

There is no physical punishment in marushalas, though pupilsmay be mildly scolded if they disrupt other children’s work.The teachers meet the parents regularly in their homes and atschool, and inform them of the progress of the children. Thesemeetings also enable the teachers to bring in children who forvarious reasons do not attend school.

Some parents, however, believe in the dictum that if you sparethe rod you spoil the child. Hence they are not comfortablewith the marushala philosophy of not punishing the children.

The children who aretrained in the marushalasalso face an adjustmentproblem when they moveto the formal schoolsystem in class 6. Unlikethe marushalas the formalschool system believes inconformity, physicalpunishment, and denial ofspace for the variousskills of children.Children who join theformal school after beingin the marushalas areoften bewildered by this.Also, they are notenthused by rote learningand such. However,children from marushalasperform well in whicheverschool they join.

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young women and men, themselves fromunderprivileged social groups. They knowthe dignity and confidence which formaleducation can give. Far from dismissingthese jobless youth as lumpen elements,MVF relies on their energies to coax thechildren to school, to run the camps andteach the children, and to ensure that theschool system runs properly. Anotherimaginative use of local resources is thesite of the summer camps. These arelocated in disused government buildings.No permission is sought — MVF simplyinforms the government that these prem-ises will be put to temporary use.

In the same spirit, parents (even landlordsand employers) are somehow persuadedto become friends of the children. Parentsare initially nervous and reluctant. Someeven threaten to commit suicide. But mosthave been touched by the joy of theirchildren at the camps. They make adjust-ments, re-allocate work responsibilitiesso that the child can continue in school.They are particularly supportive of girls.

It is not that child labour has disappearedfrom the area. But the movement hascaught on. In 1992, a survey by MVF putthe number of out-of-school children inShankarapally Mandal at 5,550 out of atotal of 10,661 children aged 5-14. Withintwo years, MVF had sent 4,190 to schools.MVF has come to the conclusion that poorparents want to send their children toschools, and that even hard-core childworkers can be integrated into the schoolsystem. The main problem, as MVF seesit, is not economic poverty, but the povertyand half-heartedness of the policy-makers who are blind to the parentaldemand for schooling. As Shantha Sinha,founder of MV Foundation, puts it:

The existence of child labour has much

more to do with the government’s own

inability, if not reluctance, to provide

adequate infrastructure and to motivate

parents through systematic extension

work than with any desire or compulsion

on the part of parents to send their

children to work.

8.6. Popular Action

Overcoming isolation

When schools are not up to their expect-ations, people sometimes take actionwithout waiting to be mobilized by NGOsor government agencies. Popular actioncan take many forms, from relatively mildsteps such as collecting money to buildan extra classroom or sending a com-plaint to the Block Education Officer tomore punchy variants such as beating upa lazy teacher (as happened in onePROBE village).

To be realistic, examples of such ini-tiatives are far from abundant. In privilegedneighbourhoods, parents do not takethings lying down, and know how to pullthe right strings. It is not uncommon, forinstance, for newspapers to carry lettersfrom middle-class parents who are angryabout teaching methods, admissionprocedures, examination results, and soon. But for parents belonging to deprivedareas or communities, making one’svoice heard is much harder. The tendency

is to accept the condition of governmentschools as yet another disadvantage onehas to cope with, and, if need be, to optout rather than fight to improve the system.Until something is done to ensure that thesystem is more responsive to parentaldemands, this attitude is likely to persist.

From time to time, however, parents (orchildren) somehow muster enoughenergy and hope to act together. Indeed,inspiring examples of popular attemptsto challenge the inertia of the schoolingsystem spring up from time to time in thenewspapers, and many more go un-reported. In this section, we present afew examples of such initiatives. One day,perhaps, more sparks of this kind will lighta fire.

Children on strike

The PROBE survey came across a fewcases of drunk teachers. Parents andchildren seldom know how to handle suchteachers, but we did hear one story ofimaginative response to this problem.

It happened in Barar (Rajsamand district,Rajasthan), sometime in 1995. This largevillage has a lively school with 25 teachersand classes from 1 to 10. At that time, how-ever, four teachers used to turn up drunk.They did not teach, and were sometimesfound throwing up or lying on the floor.Some of them collected money for liquorfrom the children, or hinted that those whobrought them daru would pass the exams.A written complaint sent by class-10children to the headteacher (himself veryirregular) elicited no response. This drovethem to open rebellion.

On D-day, after the morning prayer, thechildren suddenly rang the bell as if it weretime for the school to close. Then they allwalked out, shouting ‘Sharabi master haihai (shame on the drunk teachers)’ andother slogans. They held a rally in thevillage, then proceeded to the panchayatghar and to the sarpanch’s house. Oneof these teachers was the sarpanch’s ownhusband.

After this, the children sat on NationalHighway 8 (which goes through Barar),demanding the transfer of the drunk

SOME POINTERS FROMTHE MVF EXPERIENCE

1. Abolition of child labour anduniversalization of school educationare practically synonymous.

2. Parents of working children arewilling to make adjustments toenable their children to go to school.

3. The income of a working child isnot the motivating factor in mostcases for the parents to send theirchildren to work.

4. There is no alternative to usinggovernment institutions in order tobring about universalization ofeducation, as NGOs cannot providethe infrastructure on the necessaryscale.

5. There is considerable scope forinvolving the village community inuniversalizing elementary education.

Shantha Sinha.

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LOKSHALA

On a pleasantly warm morning in October 1997, hundreds ofpeople from six villages in Karpi Panchayat, Jahanabaddistrict, Bihar, gathered under a shamiana in Karpi village.The area is well-known for violent clashes between organizedgroups representing class (and also caste) interests ofpeasants and rural elites. On this day, however, people camefor a different purpose. They gathered here to conduct a ‘LokSansad’ (people’s parliament) on the status of elementaryeducation in their villages.

Prior to this gathering, local voluntary youth groups hadsurveyed the government schools in their village and hadprepared reports which were now displayed. Except forsarpanchs from neighbouring panchayats, no dignitaries werepresent. People listened with rapt attention as each report wasread out. There was heated debate on the state of the school,low quality of learning, teacher’s relationship with children,reasons for high push-out rates, etc.

Specific action points were identified. One of the six villagesattracted maximum attention since it was without a school.While the deliberations went on, a slip was delivered to oneof the elders by a boy. The elder informed the gathering that agovernment school teacher, known for his frequentabsenteeism, had promised that he would now begin to teachregularly.

Someone pointed out that few women were present in thegathering. A special plea was sent to the women to join themeeting. Soon about fifty musahar women (among the lowestcastes in Bihar) arrived and participated actively in thediscussion. In the end, a Sankalp Patra (a pledge to oneself)was read out. Part of the pledge was that, henceforth, womenwould be involved in all deliberations.

Around the same time, thousands of kilometres away, atJahangirpuri, Delhi, 275 slum-dwellers whose children weredenied admission into government schools, got together for aDakhila Utsav (festival of admissions), and presented acommon petition to the government sealed with theirthumbprints. As a result, the Municipal Corporation of Delhibrought out an order directing schools to admit thesechildren. At Debitola block, Dhubri district, Assam, villageyouth from 11 panchayats were busy preparing to documentthe history of their villages as a start-up for the community’sintervention for the school curriculum. At a governmentschool classroom at Valmiki Pathar, Karad district,Maharastra, children were learning from a farm worker (theteacher for the day) how parallel lines can be drawn on acresof land.

Meanwhile around 12 teachers from various universities inIndia were engaged in the process of formulating themepapers on a wide range of issues related to these community-based initiatives as part of a UGC fellowship programme.These are just a few examples of Lokshala initiatives todemonstrate an alternative approach to the universalization ofelementary education.

Lokshala was initiated in March 1995 by Bharat Jan VigyanJatha, an all-India people’s science network with academicsupport from Delhi University’s Department of Education. It isenvisaged as a nation-wide process of social intervention inthe government school system. Today, it functions at tenblock-level ‘advanced field laboratories’ in different states,each geo-culturally unique. Each laboratory views all schoolsof a development block as a subset of the education systemfrom the standpoint of social intervention.

The Lokshala approach is founded on lessons drawn from awhole spectrum of indigenous experiments conducted in thecountry in recent decades. One of these lessons is that poorparents are keen to send their children to school, as long as theschools provide a satisfactory learning environment. It is amyth that poor parents do not send their children due to lack ofawareness of the value of education, or because they are moreinterested in the money their children can earn from work.Other basic principles of the Lokshala approach are thefollowing:

1. Establishment of a common school system, based onneighbourhood schools (as recommended by the KothariCommission).

2. Improved access and quality of education will come aboutonly through the systematic intervention of local communities,leading to their active participation in decision-making.

3. The cutting edge of this nation-wide social intervention totransform the government-school system consists of thosesections of society whose children do not go to school at all ordrop out at an early age.

4. Among these communities women will provide the initiativeand leadership for social intervention.

5. The community will participate in the re-construction of therelevant curricula which will be redesigned to reflect the globalsocio-political reality, and to create a critical consciousness ofcontemporary issues.

6. The ‘world of knowledge’ must be related to the ‘world ofwork’ in order to make knowledge meaningful and relevant.

7. Learning during the early years must be through the mothertongue for all children, though gradual switching to thestandard language of the region may be woven into thecurriculum.

8. Lokshala also emphasizes that education is a subset ofsociety and not an independent entity. Therefore the strugglefor access to good-quality education for all children isinextricably linked with the struggle against deprivation,undernutrition and ill-health. Fundamental social factors suchas persistent disparities, impoverishment and exploitation areignored only at grave risk to our common aspirations to build apeaceful, just and humane society.

The Lokshala Team.

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teachers — all four of them were absentthat day. Many villagers joined them insinging songs and blocking the road. Amassive jam built up, stretching for severalkilometres on each side. Within half anhour the police arrived, followed later bythe Block Development Officer, a seniormember of the zila parishad, the StateDevelopment Officer and, finally (fourhours after the sit-in began), the DistrictEducation Officer. The DEO promised totransfer the teachers within four days. Thepupils called off the strike, but warned thatthey would resume their agitation if theDEO broke his promise.

Four days later, nothing had happened,so pupils from class 9 and class 10walked out and blocked the road again.This time the DEO promptly transferredthe teachers to four different places. Oneof them, however, was back within twoyears, and that too as head of the school.

Long march to Nasik

Early this year the exploits of somespunky children from a remote region ofMaharashtra made headlines in the localnewspapers and even appeared on thecover of India Today. These tribal childrenwere all inmates of an ‘ashram school’, aspecial residential school created undera scheme aimed at the promotion of tribaleducation. To protest against conditionsin their school, 23 children between theages of 10 and 12 had marched 66 kilo-metres across hilly terrain to the zonalheadquarters at Nasik. Their complaintsgiven below are indicative of the tryingconditions under which deprived childrenare struggling to study:

!"!"!"!"!" the headteacher came only onweekends;

!"!"!"!"!" the watchman ill-treated the children;

!"!"!"!"!" uniforms had not been given;

!"!"!"!"!" for three months, no breakfast had

been given to the children, and lunchconsisted only of rice and daal withone roti;

!"!"!"!"!"thirsty children had to walk to a nearbybrook, as the school tubewells hadstopped functioning three years earlier.

RETIRED CLERK TURNS DEDICATED TEACHER

Dana Singh is a man with a mission. He has had a hard life: orphaned early, heeducated himself with great difficulty, even leaving school more than once. Afterclass 8 he drifted for seven years, doing wage labour and other jobs, and trying tolearn by himself in between. Eventually, he managed to pass his Higher Secondary,and to get a job as a peon at the Agricultural University at Bikaner. Later he passedthe LDC (Lower Division Clerk) exam, and finally the UDC (Upper Division Clerk)exam.

Twenty-one years later, Dana Singh retired and went back to his village (in southernRajasthan), where he decided to help deprived children to study. He gives tuitionsto high-school pupils, charging Rs 25 per month, and also teaches out-of-schoolchildren. Initially he managed on his own, with some help from a retired secondary-school headteacher. Later he received a small grant from a local organization to runa non-formal education centre.

Dana Singh teaches with dedication and enthusiasm. His home, which houses thecentre, was built with the school in mind. Imaginative charts, maps and teachingaids (most of them hand-made) brighten the classroom. Each pupil has a colourfulcard bearing his or her name. On arrival, each child picks up the relevant card andhands it to Dana Singh. This helps to keep attendance records, and to impart asense of the written word. Children learn to read and write within two years, eventhough the centre opens only two hours a day.

Dana Singh’s centre is popular with the parents. Some children come because theywork during school hours, but others are simply drawn by the centre’s attractiveatmosphere. Some parents let their child study at the centre for a couple of yearsbefore enrolling them in the government school, because they know that the childwill learn faster with Dana Singh. This year, 31 children from the centre joined thelocal school in classes ranging from 1 to 4. Out of 27 children currently studying atthe centre, 16 are girls.

Like most teachers, Dana Singh complains that parents are not doing enough tosend their children to school regularly. But he has a good rapport with them, andon the whole he is heartened by this experience. He also points out that, since hiscentre started, parents have become far more demanding of the local governmentschool.

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Youth to the

rescue at Badsu

: They stepped

in to teach the

children

during a

protracted

teacher’s strike.

The children were happy with theoutcome of their protest. Uniforms andwater supply had been promised, a newheadteacher appointed and the watch-man suspended. Vegetables were begin-ning to show up on the menu. ‘The rice isfinally being cleaned before it is cooked,’commented little Heeru Bhoye, aged 10.Her schoolmate, who had been waitingalmost a whole year for a teacher, washappy that a new one had been appointed.

Alternative schooling inBadsu

All over Uttar Pradesh, in August this year,the younger children were a little confused.They felt that they had been away fromschool for a long, long time. One little boyeven told us confidently that he was a drop-out — he had left school a long time ago.In fact, this prolonged break was simplydue to the teachers’ strike, which startedat the end of the summer vacation. Andthe strike showed no sign of coming to anend.

Yet the primary school in Badsu (Muz-affarnagar, U.P.) was more lively than ever.Eight young men, with qualificationsranging from class 8 to MA BEd, haddecided that while teachers and thegovernment sorted out their differencesthey would help the children to continuestudying. The pupils were sitting in neatrows on the verandah, outside the lockedclassrooms, working studiously. Therewas order and discipline, and the youth

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claimed that the school had not seen somuch activity for a long time. They hadbeen inspired by an appeal from the ChiefMinister, who asked educated youth tohelp stranded pupils during the strike.

These are just a few examples of actionstaken by ordinary people to challenge theinertia of the schooling system. To facilitatesuch initiatives, there is an urgent need toimprove the responsiveness of theeducation administration to parentaldemands. The first requirement of moreactive popular involvement in schoolingmatters is a sense that change ispossible.

C H A P T E R N I N E

9.1. WhatHappened?

Not so long ago, Himachal Pradesh wasconsidered as a ‘backward’ region of northIndia. This view, for instance, often comesup in the Report of the States Reorgan-ization Commission, published in 1955,which called for sympathetic consider-ation of the demands of ‘the extremelybackward and exploited people of this

state’. In those days, literacy rates in Him-achal Pradesh (21 per cent for males and9 per cent for females, as per the 1961census) were below the correspondingall-India averages. Since then, however,the state has been making spectacularprogress in elementary education (Chart9.1). In 1991, literacy rates in the 10-14age group were as high as 94 per cent formales and 86 per cent for females. Fur-ther rapid progress has been achievedduring the last seven years, bringing thestate very close to universal primary

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education. The only other states withhigher rates of school attendance are Goaand Kerala.

In several ways, the progress of ele-mentary education has been even moreimpressive in Himachal Pradesh than inKerala or Goa. First, the transition frommass illiteracy to near-universal primaryeducation has taken place over a muchshorter period of time in Himachal Pra-desh. Second, educational expansion inHimachal Pradesh has been based al-most entirely on government schools, withrelatively little contribution from privateinstitutions. Third, Himachal Pradesh hasan unfavourable settlement pattern, withsmall villages scattered over large areas(e.g. one-third of the rural population livesin villages with a population of less than300). Fourth, child labour used to play animportant role in Himachal Pradesh’seconomy, due inter alia to the dependenceof many households on environmentalresources and to the fact that a high

proportion of adult women work outsidethe household.

The PROBE survey found plenty of evi-dence of the rapid progress of schooling

in Himachal Pradesh. In this state, 48villages (located in seven differentdistricts) were surveyed, and 154 house-holds were interviewed. Among 285children aged 6-12 in the sample house-holds, only five had never been to school,and the proportion currently attendingschool was as high as 97 per cent for boysand 95 for girls. As Chart 9.2 illustrates,these high levels of school attendance areconsistent with secondary data. The latteralso point to low socio-economic dis-parities in access to elementary edu-cation.

9.2. InstantExplanations

When presented with these facts, manycommentators claim to have a readyexplanation. Examples of instant explana-tions are: many people in HimachalPradesh have a job in the army; HimachalPradesh receives a lot of assistance fromthe central government; income levels inHimachal Pradesh are relatively high; andso on. All these observations are correct,but on their own they hardly ‘explain’ theschooling revolution in Himachal Pradeshin all its aspects.

To illustrate, consider the ‘army jobs’explanation. If this were such a powerfulfactor of educational expansion, onewould expect to find high literacy rates in,

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say, Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan) — the districtwhere the proportion of men employed inthe army is the highest in India. Contraryto this prediction, illiteracy is endemic inJhunjhunu, where, for instance, three-fourths of all women aged 7 and aboveare unable to read or write. As for the ‘highincome levels’ explanation, it suggeststhat Punjab should be well aheadof Himachal Pradesh in educationalmatters. Here again, the prediction back-fires: the incidence of illiteracy among boysaged 10-14 is more than three times ashigh in Punjab as in Himachal Pradesh.

This is not to deny that army recruitmentor high incomes can help to spread lit-eracy. But to explain Himachal Pradesh’sprogress on that basis alone requires afaith in the power of employment andincome effects that is simply not borneout by any evidence (note also the edu-cational breakthrough, which goes backto the nineteen-sixties, has largely pre-ceded rather than followed the economictake-off). Further, some aspects of Him-achal Pradesh’s success would be hardto explain in those terms at all, e.g. theremarkably low gender bias in schoolattendance at the primary level (army jobsare a non-starter here). As we shall seein the next section, the schooling situationin Himachal Pradesh has many otherfeatures that defy instant explanation.

9.3. Some FieldObservations

The PROBE investigators who workedboth in Himachal Pradesh and in othernorth Indian states had a great deal to sayabout the contrast between the two re-gions. To give you an idea of this contrast,this section revisits the ground covered inchapters 3-7 (in the same order), andspells out various ways in which theschooling situation in Himachal Pradeshappears to be positively different.

Schooling and the family

High motivation: The PROBE invest-igators were struck by the exceptionallyhigh level of parental motivation for

education in Himachal Pradesh. Mostparents take it for granted that schoolingis an essential part of every child’s up-bringing, and have ambitious hopes fortheir own children’s education. Thereasons for wanting children to go toschool also show a broader under-standing of the value of education than inother states. Many parents, for instance,perceptively explained how educationhelps a person to stand for panchayatelections, do bank work, travel anywherewithout fear, and generally to participatewith confidence in modern society.

‘Ladki ka darja hamare deshmein kuchh bhi nahin hai. Ladki

padh-likhkar samaj meinapne adhikar prapt kar sakti hai.

(Girls have a very low status in ourcountry. If a girl studies she can claim

her rights in society.)’

A father in Kapoti (Hamirpur district).

Social consensus: In contrast with thesituation in the other states, wherepractical expectations from the schoolingsystem vary between different com-munities, the passion for education inHimachal Pradesh is widely shared.People consider schooling to be importantnot only for their own children but for allchildren. Most parents support compul-sory education, not only at the elementarylevel but even — in many cases — up toclass 10.

‘Education is very important.It should not be left to the parents to

leave their children uneducated.All children should go to school.’

Roop Chand, a poor Harijan farmer fromDughilag (Kullu district).

‘Education should be madecompulsory. Children may not

realize the importance of education.’

A poor labourer from Chanon(Kullu district).

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‘[If primary education is madecompulsory], no person will

be left illiterate.’

A seventeen-year old girl from a poorscheduled-caste family, who studiesin class 9 in Ner (Mandi district).

Low gender bias: Unlike in other states,parents in Himachal Pradesh have ambi-tious educational goals even for girls.‘Girls have the same capabilities as boys,’was typical of the attitude of rural parents.The gender bias in school attendance isvery low at the primary level, and rapidlydeclining at the upper-primary level. Edu-cational aspirations for girls are high(Chart 9.3), and much closer to the corres-ponding aspirations for boys than in otherstates. Nor do these aspirations remainempty abstractions or vain hopes: in the13-18 age group, the proportion of girlsattending school is as high as 73 per cent,compared with 32 per cent in the PROBEstates. Even among economically orsocially disadvantaged families, it iscommon for adolescent girls to go toschool.

The reasons for wanting to educatedaughters are also different in HimachalPradesh. Here, a daughter’s educationis not seen just through the prism ofmarriage. Improving her prospects ofgetting a good job is another commonmotive, reflecting the high involvement ofHimachali women in employment outside

the home. Parents also have a concernfor their daughters’ well-being aftermarriage, and a sense that educationwould contribute to it (‘an educateddaughter has a better chance to improveher life after marriage,’ said one poorlabourer).

‘Ladki ki jivan mein kaafi samasyaenaati hain. Agar veh padhi hogi to in sab

ko asani se suljha sakti hai.(There are many problems in a woman’s

life. If she is educated she can solvethem more easily).’

A mother in Ner (Mandi district).

‘Ladki atma-nirbhar hogi. Kisi kebharose nahin rahegi.

(She will become self-confident. Shewill not be dependent on others.)’

A mother from a poor family inBatran (Hamirpur district). Her four

daughters are all going to school.

‘Educated girls are more demandingbut it is important to educate them.

They can learn some trade.’

(An upper-caste parent in Chanon,Kullu district).

Even the marriage considerations aresomewhat different in Himachal Pradesh.As in other states, a majority of parents(79 per cent) took the view that a daugh-ter’s education facilitates her marriage.But the perceived reasons why educatedbrides are in high demand are somewhatdifferent in Himachal Pradesh. For in-stance, they include a positive social valu-ation of the employment opportunities ofeducated women.

‘Agar ladki padhi hogi to ladkevale yeh dekhenge ki yeh kahin bhinaukari karke apna va doosron ka

pet bhar sakti hai.(If a girl is educated, the boy’s family

will see that she can get a job anywhereand support both herself and others).’

A mother in Uperi Baheli(Mandi district).

S imilarly, among those who felt thateducation makes a daughter’s marriagemore difficult, higher dowry (the mainconcern elsewhere) was not the onlyissue. Some respondents, for instance,commented that an educated daughterbecomes more ‘choosy’ in matrimonialmatters. As one Harijan mother put it, ‘itis more difficult to get an educated girl

Even eldest daughters in poorfamilies go to school

Suman, a seventeen-year old girlfrom Batran (Hamirpur district), iscurrently enrolled in class 11. Herfather, a blacksmith (lohar) whomakes iron tools, dropped out afterclass 4. Her mother has had evenless schooling. The family doeswage labour, for which they are paidin cash and kind. In spite of thefamily’s meagre resources, Sumanand her two younger siblings (Vipinin class 8 and Sushma Devi in class6) all go to school.

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married because an educated daughteris more particular — she wants to be marr-ied into a good house or to someone ofher choice.’ Incidentally, the greater assert-iveness of educated daughters was notalways viewed in a negative light — farfrom it. One parent took the positive viewthat ‘an educated daughter can get a goodmatch, and can also think for herselfwhether a particular home suits her’.

‘An educated daughter’s marriageis more expensive. But a good

marriage gives muchhappiness to her parents.’

Supportive attitude: Himachali parentstend to have a responsible and supportiveattitude towards their children’s schooling.Education ranks high among their spend-ing priorities (one parent even stated that,if needed, he would sell land to educatehis children). At home, children’s studiesreceive much attention, not only fromparents but often from other relatives too.Parents also tend to have a fairly sup-portive attitude towards teachers. As else-where, they often have complaints ofvarious kinds against the local teachers,but this does not stand in the way of mutualcooperation.

Child self-confidence: Compared with theirpeers elsewhere, Himachali childrenimpressed several PROBE investigatorswith their self-confidence and high spirits.The children often spoke to them withassurance, proudly showing their school-books or displaying their knowledge. Mostof them read and wrote fluently (and wefound no case of a school-going childremaining illiterate). Often they hadambitious plans for the future. All thisapplied even to girls, some of whom men-tioned their hope to become a teacher ora doctor.

‘Khelne ke acche avsar milte hain.Adhyapika shabashi deti hain.

(In school we get the opportunity toplay. And the teacher also praises me.)’

Anil Kumar from Uperi Baheli (districtMandi).

A MODEL SCHOOL

Visiting the school in Ner (Mandi district) was a memorable experience for thePROBE survey team. When the investigators arrived, the three teachers presentwere actively teaching. Children were sitting peacefully and listening to them.

The teachers spoke affectionately about the children. When we interviewed theclass-1 teacher, she was very open, and showed a sharp understanding ofchild development. She was also confident of her pupils’ achievements, and said wecould question the children if we liked. The children’s responses indicated highlearning achievements and self-confidence.

Twelve-year old Om Prakash (from a poor dalit family struggling to make ends meet)is in class 5. He told the team, ‘School jane mein maja aata hai. Aur naukari keliye padhna jaroori hai (I enjoy going to school. And it is also necessary for me tostudy to get a job).’ Om Prakash is proud to represent his school in the district-levelgames.

The atmosphere was conducive to learning. To their amazement, the investigatorsfound that every time the bell rang to signal the end of a class, the children weregiven five minutes to wander around — an innovative and child-friendly practice.The school had a number of story books in its small library, frequently borrowed bythe children.

The teacher felt that parents had a positive attitude towards the school and weremindful of their children’s needs. The parents, for their part, were full ofappreciation for her and for the school. ‘Adhyapika bachhon ka poora dhyanrakhti hain (the teacher takes full care of the children),’ said one. ‘Hamein koishikayat nahin (we have no complaints),’ concluded another. Ner certainly has aschool of which not just Himachal but the entire country can be proud.

Photo

In H.P., sports — rarely mentioned in other

states — are a common school activity.

The school environment

Orderly premises: From one point of view,the physical infrastructure of villageschools in Himachal Pradesh is no betterthan elsewhere. The facilities areminimal, especially in small hamlets,where a school often looks much thesame (at first sight) as the typical villageschool in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. And theaverage distance from home to schoolremains much higher in Himachal Pra-desh than elsewhere, due to the adversesettlement pattern. On the positive side,school facilities in Himachal Pradesh tendto be better maintained and utilized.School premises are usually tidy, in somecases even attractive. Also, there is muchless dilapidation of school furniture andteaching material. A significant proportionof schools in Himachal Pradesh evensucceed in making active use of relativelyfragile items such as electric fans, musicalinstruments and library books. In otherstates, these facilities are seldom func-tional, when they exist at all.

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Better staffing: A more crucial aspect ofthe schooling infrastructure in HimachalPradesh is that village schools tend to berelatively well staffed. The average primaryschool has more than three teachers.Single-teacher schools, very common inthe past, have virtually disappeared (theremaining single-teacher schools consistmainly of newly-created schools whereonly two or three grades are operational).Similarly, the pupil-teacher ratio in thesample villages is only 27, as against 50for the PROBE states.

Accurate records: Village schools inHimachal Pradesh have well-maintainedrecords, including accurate enrolment andattendance registers. In most schools,the day’s attendance figures are writtenon a blackboard fixed on the outer wall.The importance of these practices (rarelyobserved in the other states) wasdiscussed in chapter 7. On a similar note,incentive schemes such as scholarshipsand prizes seem to be efficiently imple-mented in most schools.

Higher activity: The problem of lowclassroom activity (see chapter 4) seemsto be less acute in Himachal Pradesh. Forinstance, we found comparatively littleevidence of practices such as closing aschool without good reason, allowingclassroom chaos to undermine any learn-ing activity, and leaving younger childrento their own devices.

More ‘exemplary’ schools: Not everyschool in Himachal Pradesh is a roaring

success — far from it. Yet, the PROBEinvestigators did notice many more ‘exem-plary’ schools in Himachal Pradesh thanelsewhere. Similarly, exemplary teacherssuch as Sem and Anjali (see chapter 5)seem to be relatively easy to find in Him-achal Pradesh.

Teachers and society

Work culture: On the whole, teachers inHimachal Pradesh have a responsibleattitude towards school duties. The prob-lem of teacher inertia, so devastating inother states (see chapter 5), is not entirelyabsent in Himachal Pradesh, but it ismuch less widespread. Various indica-tions of this are implicit in the precedingobservations, from better utilization ofinfrastructural facilities to more accurateschool records and higher classroomactivity.

Concern for children: Going beyondminimal standards of responsibility, someteachers in Himachal Pradesh showedan unusual degree of commitment to theprogress of their pupils. Genuine interestin pedagogy, for instance, was not un-common. Another example came from ateacher who explained that he alwaystaught mathematics early in the morning,when children are most alert. Generally,the organization of a school in HimachalPradesh gives the impression of beingoriented to the needs of the pupils asmuch as to the convenience of theteachers.

INSIDE THE CLASSROOM

Unlike in other states, many of thechildren in Himachal Pradesh wereable to describe teaching activityinside the classroom. Althoughthere was a lot of emphasis oncopying from the black-board ortextbooks (and some parents madethe perceptive observation that thisteaching method is overused), therewas also reading by the teacher andby different children. Theimpression that emerges from theseaccounts is one of a functioningclassroom. Here are some examplesof how the children themselves,some only six years old, describedthe previous day’s mathematics andHindi classes:!"!"!"!"!"The teacher wrote the numbers 1-100 on the board and the childrencopied them on their slates.!"!"!"!"!"The teacher wrote sums on theboard and the children had to dothem in their books. Then theteacher checked their books.!"!"!"!"!"The children were asked to writethe numbers 1-100 on their slates.!"!"!"!"!"The teacher read a poem in Hindiand the children repeated it.!"!"!"!"!"The teacher read from the Hinditextbook and the children repeatedwhat he said.!"!"!"!"!"The teacher read from the Hinditextbook, then different children readthe lesson aloud. Then the teacherdid the questions and answers onthe blackboard.!"!"!"!"!"The teacher read from the Hinditextbook; then the ‘monitor’ read thelesson aloud and the children wereasked to answer the questions athome.

In Uperi Baheli (Mandi), the childrenhave games and drill for an hourevery day. The children are alsotaught singing and needlework. Inseveral schools, the childrenmentioned that one of the reasonsthey like going to school is that theyget a chance to take part in sports.The best evidence of a livelyclassroom is the fact that thechildren are so positive about theirschool experience.

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Female teachers: In the sample schools,41 per cent of the teachers were female,compared with only 21 per cent in the otherstates. This pattern, confirmed by second-ary data, is all the more remarkable giventhat the problems of residence and com-muting for female teachers (see section5.3) are, if anything, potentially moreserious in Himachal Pradesh. Interest-ingly, few female teachers in that state ex-pressed the sense of insecurity or hostilityoften found elsewhere. This fits with thestate’s low crime rates and long traditionof women’s work outside the household.

‘If the government does notprovide any facilities, we get

them by collecting funds from theparents. Once we have 30 per cent,

the government provides 70 per cent.Sometimes the parents give thetotal amount. The parents havealready contributed to getting

equipment for the school.They are willing to make

more rooms in the school.’

A teacher in Batran (Hamirpur district),where the school has an active PTA.

Positive rapport with parents: In contrastwith the antagonistic patterns of teacher-parent relations often found in other states

(see section 5.5), we noticed a good dealof positive interaction between parentsand teachers in Himachal Pradesh. Whilecomplaints do exist on both sides, thereis also much mutual understanding, andeven practical cooperation. In several vil-lages, for instance, parents have helpedto build extra classrooms for the villageschool.

Administrative matters

Even in terms of the administrativeissues discussed in chapter 7, HimachalPradesh is doing quite well. Briefly, themanagement of the education systemseems to be comparatively responsible,efficient, and responsive to the needsof teachers and children. To illustrate:(1) very few teaching posts are vacant (inthe other states, more than 10 per cent ofthe posts sanctioned are vacant); (2) sal-aries are paid punctually on the first day ofeach month (in Bihar, irregular paymentof salaries is a major issue); (3) the schoolcalendar is adjusted district-wise in tunewith the agricultural cycle, to avoid clasheswith periods of high demand for childlabour (e.g. the apple-picking season inKullu district); (4) there is a Board exam-ination at the end of class 5; (5) schoolinspectors do not confine their attentionto the registers (some even enquire aboutthe health of children); (6) the PROBE

survey encountered no case of corruptionin school incentive programmes.

We end by noting the virtual absence ofprivate schools in rural areas of HimachalPradesh. This vacuum is not due to theabsence of purchasing power amongparents, which tends to be higher in Him-achal Pradesh than in the PROBE states.Rather, it fits in a general pattern men-tioned in the preceding chapter: privateschools are most common in areaswhere government schools do not func-tion. Conversely, if government schoolsfunction well, there may be little scope forprivate schools, as seems to be the casein rural Himachal Pradesh. In this connec-tion, it is worth noting that Himachaliparents seem to have an unusual faith ingovernment schools. Some of them evenassert that, given the choice (andassuming costs to be the same), theywould rather put their child in a govern-ment than in a private school. And privateschools in rural Himachal Pradesh, wherethey do spring up, seem to be constrainedto provide quality education (rather thanjust substitute for collapsing governmentschools). Ramshackle coaching centres,so common elsewhere, have no takers.

9.4. TheFoundations ofSuccess

The schooling revolution in HimachalPradesh is likely to have deep social andpolitical roots. The sweeping contrastsidentified in the preceding section are notjust the reflection of a particular policyinitiative, even less of some specific‘scheme’ or ‘campaign’. Understandingthe schooling situation in Himachal Pra-desh calls for a broad perspective, goingwell beyond the instant explanations men-tioned earlier.

To illustrate this point, consider the issueof gender bias. All the ‘reasons’ given byparents elsewhere for withdrawing theirdaughters from school early on (e.g. onsetof puberty, demands of domestic work,absence of upper-primary school in the

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Teachers in Himachal Pradesh have comparatively positive attitudes towards female pupils.

Himachal Pradesh and Haryana present an interestingcontrast. Economic conditions in these two states are quitesimilar, but gender relations differ a great deal. To helpunderstand this contrast, and how it affects girls’ schooling, Iconducted detailed interviews with 38 mothers inManhendranagar district (Haryana), and another 38 mothersin Solan and Sirmaur districts (Himachal Pradesh). Here aresome findings and impressions from these interviews:

1. In both states, the mothers interviewed were unanimous insaying that education was important for girls. One motive,particularly common in Himachal Pradesh (H.P.), is thateducated girls are likely to find better jobs: 36 out of 38respondents in H.P. expected their daughters to work outsidethe home after marriage. In both states, education was alsoconsidered to have value in itself: educated women were saidto have more independence, greater self-confidence, and morefreedom to move outside the village. In Haryana (where two-thirds of the respondents had no other occupation thanhousehold work), women often mentioned that educationimproves marriage prospects, and helps mothers to run ahousehold.

2. Only 3 of the respondents’ daughters had never been toschool. All 3 lived in Haryana. Maternal literacy was higher inH.P. than in Haryana, even though literacy rates in thepreceding generation (i.e. the respondents’ own mothers) weresimilar. This confirms that the expansion of schooling has beenmore rapid in Himachal Pradesh. H.P. mothers were also moreknowledgeable about schooling matters than their counterpartsin Haryana. The latter only had a vague idea of the functioningof the local school (e.g. how many days it had been open in thepreceding week).

3. School facilities were not very different in the two states(though average distance from home to school is higher inHimachal Pradesh). Teaching standards, however, seem todiffer. For instance, in Haryana several mothers complainedthat teachers spent time playing cards or knitting during schoolhours.

4. Marriage customs in both states are similar in many respects(e.g. practice of dowry and patrilocal residence). But there are afew noticeable contrasts. Almost all Haryana mothers considerit preferable for a young couple to live with the husband’s jointfamily, but less than half of H.P. mothers share that view.Similarly, 26 out of 38 respondents in Haryana would like theirdaughter to marry before the age of twenty-one, but only 9mothers in H.P. feel the same. Again, the idea that a daughtermight marry someone with less education than herself wasconsidered unthinkable in Haryana, but quite acceptable in H.P.Most striking is the difference in relations between parents anddaughters after marriage. Thirteen mothers in H.P. had seentheir parents ten times or more during the preceding two years,compared with only four mothers in Haryana.

5. Generally, I found less inequality between men and women inH.P. than in Haryana. Mothers in H.P. have more say inhousehold decisions. This applies in particular to education:many mothers in Haryana had no idea of the cost of schooling,and considered this to be their husband’s business. Onewoman in Haryana prefaced most of her responses with ‘myhusband thinks...’. The power of parents-in-law in thehousehold was also much greater in Haryana than in H.P.

In Haryana, the hold of patriarchal values pervaded women’sown outlook. In response to a question about the age at whicha daughter should be married, one mother bluntly said:‘Daughters are a burden — the sooner you get rid of them, thebetter.’

Marie-Eve Bondroit.

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Gender relations are very unequal in Haryana, with women

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GENDER RELATIONS AND SCHOOLING: HIMACHAL PRADESH VS. HARYANA

village) are equally applicable in HimachalPradesh. Yet, these alleged obstacleshave somehow been blasted away over ashort period of time. This achievementcan be understood only in the context ofvery different gender relations in HimachalPradesh, which include a higher partici-pation of women in the labour force aswell as in social life, a closer link betweenadult women and their parents aftermarriage, women’s greater freedom ofmovement outside the home, more sym-metric patterns of marriage transactions,and so on. When a little girl in a remotevillage of Himachal Pradesh proudly saysthat she wants to ‘become a doctor’, sheis making a far-reaching statement aboutthe position of women in society.

A complete analysis of the foundationsof Himachal Pradesh’s success is be-yond the scope of this report. Indeed, the

puzzle is not entirely resolved. Someuseful insights, however, do emerge fromthe PROBE survey.

Official commitment

Part of the credit certainly goes to the stategovernment. Development planning inHimachal Pradesh has included aconsistent emphasis on developing therural infrastructure, with roads andschools receiving high priority. Publicpolicy also involves an explicit com-mitment to the rapid expansion of edu-cation, sorely lacking in the other states ofnorth India. One symptom of this commit-ment is the high level of per-capita expen-diture on education, which is about twicethe all-India average. Correspondingly,the teacher-child ratio is also better: abouttwice as high in Himachal Pradesh as inIndia as a whole. This has greatly helpedto ensure that the school environment isconducive to teaching and learning.

Another explicit policyobjective is the reductionof inter-regional dis-parities in developmentindicators, including edu-cational levels. This hasled to high investment inthe remote tribal districts(e.g. Kinnaur, Lahul andSpiti), which have caughtup remarkably fast withthe rest of the state.There is an interestingparallel here with Kerala,where the elimination ofregional disparities alsobecame a major goal ofpublic policy after 1947,enabling Malabar to catchup rapidly with Travancoreand Cochin. In the samevein, government inter-vention in Himachal Pra-desh has played a key rolein the removal of socio-economic disparities inaccess to education. Forinstance, there are manyincentive schemes fordisadvantaged pupils,including free textbooksuntil class 10 for

scheduled-caste and scheduled-tribechildren. All this is in sharp contrast withthe gross neglect of ‘backward areas’ anddisadvantaged communities in manyother states.

The quality of education management inHimachal Pradesh, mentioned earlier, isanother symptom of political commitmentto the expansion of education. Realisticgoals were set, and pursued with deter-mination. For instance, when OperationBlackboard declared war on single-teacher schools, Himachal Pradesh tookthe lead: the proportion of such schoolstumbled from 28 per cent in 1986 to lessthan 2 per cent in 1995. Similarly, theofficial goal of giving priority to women inteacher appointments has been takenseriously in Himachal Pradesh. In otherstates, there are amazing contradictionsbetween official rhetoric and practicalaction.

The state government’s initiatives havebeen helped by a generous dose of finan-cial aid from the central government. Thisobservation, however, does not detractfrom the crucial role of these initiatives inpromoting education. The fact that the gov-ernment of Himachal Pradesh has madefull use of this assistance is also to itscredit. In other states (notably Bihar andUttar Pradesh), financial assistance foreducation from the central government isroutinely underutilized.

Parental demand

While the state government has playeda leading role in the provision of schoolfacilities all over Himachal Pradesh, theeffective utilization of these facilities owesmuch to the parents. Many of them had towalk long distances in their own childhoodto reach the nearest school, if a schoolwas available at all. When schools start-ed springing up in their own village, theypromptly seized this new opportunity fortheir children. Initially at least, the mainmotive for sending children (mainly boys)to school was the prospect of better jobs,enhanced by the ‘demonstration effect’ ofarmy recruits and other governmentemployees. With incomes growing quiterapidly, education also became moreaffordable. Indeed, household spending

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Both roads and schools have received high

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on education is much higher in HimachalPradesh than in the PROBE states.

What is remarkable, however, is howthese favourable conditions soon led toan explosion of educational aspirations,spreading throughout the society. After all,similar conditions also applied in Punjaband Haryana, but with more limitedresults.

One possible reason why parentalmotivation in Himachal Pradesh hasspread so rapidly is that the villageschools function relatively well. As a result,education is not a mirage but a realistichope. The ‘discouragement effect’, so de-structive in other states (see chapter 3),has not taken root. Instead, Himachal Pra-desh has benefited from a virtuous circleof active state intervention, high parentalinterest and decent teaching standards.

Another helpful factor is the relativelyhomogeneous nature of the village societyin Himachal Pradesh (see Box, p. 125).

The point is not that hill villages are ‘egal-itarian’, but rather that the divisions ofclass, caste and gender are less intensethan elsewhere, and leave scope for asense of village solidarity. This particularaspect of the social structure has far-reaching implications for the progress ofschooling. It means, for instance, that thesocial influence of ‘role models’ (such asarmy recruits) is not confined to specificcastes or classes: if someone in the vil-lage gets a good job, it gives a sense ofpossibility to the whole community. A rela-tively homogeneous social structure mayalso facilitate the emergence of con-sensual social norms, such as educationbeing an essential part of every child’supbringing. By contrast, in divided and fac-tionalized village societies, educationalaspirations and opportunities are oftensharply compartmentalized on the basisof class, caste and gender.

The sense of village community hasanother positive aspect of great import-ance: it fosters the notion that the localschool is everyone’s school. This is onereason why village schools in Himachal

Pradesh do not becomedysfunctional so easily: ifthe school stops func-tioning, the whole villagecommunity has a stake insolving the problem. Thisis quite different from asituation where privilegedfamilies solve the prob-lem for themselves bysending their children toprivate schools. A divisivesituation of this kind,where some familiesenjoy private schoolingwhile others in the samevillage are deprived ofschooling facilities,seems to be socially lessacceptable in HimachalPradesh than elsewherein north India.

Civiccooperation

In Himachal Pradesh, thePROBE investigators

observed quite a few examples of collec-tive initiative to improve the local school.This took the form both of cooperativeaction among parents as well as of coop-eration between parents and teachers. Asnoted earlier, for instance, in many villagesparents had helped to build extra class-rooms in the local school. Other examplesinclude supplying wood in the winter,helping to level the playground, donatingmoney to improve the school building, andeven paying for electric fans.

These examples of civic cooperation alsothrow some light on the reasons why theschooling system seems to be moreaccountable in Himachal Pradesh, evenwhen the formal management rules arethe same as elsewhere. We were in-trigued, for instance, to find relatively well-functioning schools even in remotevillages where no inspector had reachedfor months or even years. It seems to bethe vigilance of parents, and their ability tokeep the local teachers and admini-strators on their toes, that keeps the sys-tem going. The role of parental vigilanceas an accountability mechanism takes aconspicuous form from time to time, forinstance when a school threatens to breakdown. We heard several interestingstories of villagers resorting to spon-taneous agitation (e.g. blocking the roador threatening to boycott the elections) toobtain a new school, or effect the transferof negligent teachers. Beneath this sur-face of open agitation seems to lie a quietgroundswell of parental involvement in theschooling system.

Interestingly, the ‘watchdog’ role ofparents has not stood in the way of aconstructive rapport with the teachers. Onthe contrary, parent-teacher relations inHimachal Pradesh appear to be morepositive than in the other states. The factthat many parents have actively supportedthe local school (through donations,labour, and other means) fits into thatpattern.

It is also worth noting that much of thiscollective action takes place throughinformal channels, rather than throughformal institutions such as panchayats orparent-teacher associations. As we notedin chapter 5, for instance, a teacher’s

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Even in remote areas, most schools arefunctional.

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SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF HILL VILLAGES

The social conditions that have facilitated the schooling

revolution in Himachal Pradesh include relatively cohesive

village communities. Hill villages are far from ‘egalitarian’, but

nevertheless the divisions of class, caste and gender that

have been so pernicious elsewhere in north India are not so

deep in this region. Starting with class, Himachal Pradesh has

few landless households, and the lowest proportion of

agricultural labourers in the population among all Indian

states. This is partly a reflection of post-independence land

reforms, aimed at guaranteeing some land to every rural

household. Also, common property resources such as

forests and pastures play a major role in the rural economy of

Himachal Pradesh, further enhancing the comparative equity

of access to productive resources.

Similarly, while caste distinctions do exist in Himachal

Pradesh, they tend to take a less hierarchical and exploitative

form than in many other regions. This feature is linked to the

relatively equitable access to productive resources:

exploitative caste hierarchies are sustained by the economic

dependence of disadvantaged castes on the privileged

castes. In a land-abundant economy with a low density of

population, disadvantaged groups have their own means of

survival, and this gives them some protection from exploitation.

The possibility of migrating to new sites is another form of

protection, and there are indeed historical examples of this

‘exit’ option being used by disadvantaged groups. A related

feature of caste relations in Himachal Pradesh is that single-

caste villages or hamlets are very common. This, too,

contributes to social cohesion at the village level.

Turning to gender relations, again these are far from equal in

Himachal Pradesh. Yet patriarchal institutions here leave more

scope for female independence. One major consideration is

that Himachali women have a high involvement in work outside

the home. This contributes to their economic independence,

freedom of movement, decision-making power, and social

recognition. Women’s autonomy has been reinforced by local

kinship practices (involving, for instance, enduring links

between parents and married daughters), and by high rates of

male out-migration. Following on this, gender discrimination is

less common in Himachal Pradesh than elsewhere in north

India. To illustrate, child mortality in Himachal Pradesh is

lower for girls than for boys, in contrast with most other states.

Himachali women also have a comparatively high involvement

in social life and village politics. Active mahila mandals, for

instance, can be found in many villages.

The relatively cohesive nature of village societies in Himachal

Pradesh facilitates civic cooperation. An example is the

practice of exchange labour, which

remains lively in Himachal Pradesh:

at harvest time, neighbours often

get together to harvest each other’s

fields in turn. It is easy to see that

this practice would be hard to

sustain in a highly unequal setting:

exchange labour between, say, a

landless person and a rich landlord

would make no sense. In general,

reciprocal cooperation is more

likely to flourish in relatively equal

societies. The schooling

revolution in Himachal Pradesh

builds, in part, on this potential for

civic cooperation.

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Below: Himachali women are highly involved in work outside

the home; this contributes to their economic independence and

freedom of movement.

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concern for his or her reputation is oneimportant basis of teacher respon-siveness to parental demands. In Him-achal Pradesh, the fact that the socialdistance between teachers and parents(e.g. in terms of educational levels andeconomic status) is relatively smallappears to reinforce this mechanism.Sometimes, formal and informal channelsof interaction complement each other.Consider for instance the role of mahilamandals, which are quite active in Him-achal Pradesh. These women’s groupshave no formal responsibility for edu-cation, but schooling matters do seem tobe frequently discussed at mahila-mandal meetings, and this is quite likelyto be a matter of concern for a local teacherwho cares about his or her reputation.

State initiative andpublic response

To some extent, the vitality of civiccooperation in Himachal Pradesh relatesto the social structure of the hill region.The absence of sharp social divisions atthe village level is likely to facilitate coop-erative action. In a highly fragmentedsociety, schooling itself is likely to becomea divisive issue: if the local school doesnot work, the sarpanch may side with theheadteacher against the community,parents may be unable to get together toaddress or even discuss the problem, andprivileged families may set up their ownprivate school. The situation wherepowerful leaders actively obstruct the

spread of education among the masses,not unknown in north India, is an extremeform of such divisions. In Himachal Pra-desh, schooling for all seems to be a littlebit more of a shared social goal.

Another important part of the story, how-ever, is that in Himachal Pradesh the statehas succeeded in creating conditions thatfoster parental involvement in the school-ing system, and a productive rapportbetween parents and teachers. A soundinfrastructure and responsible admini-stration have averted the sense of dis-couragement and powerlessness socommon elsewhere. Parents find thattheir efforts to educate their children arerewarded, and teachers are given themeans to teach properly. These favour-able conditions tend to feed on each otherin various ways. For instance, decentteaching standards raise parents’ expect-ations of the schooling system, and theseexpectations, in turn, help to sustain thework culture among teachers.

‘The teacher beats the children, she knits and sleeps most of the time.

If the school had a PTA we couldhave removed her.’

A parent in Kapoti (Hamirpur district).

Similarly, there is a virtuous circle of stateinitiative and public response. Just as the

state has empowered parents to getinvolved in the schooling system, parentsnow play a key role in calling for furtherimprovements. Compared with theircounterparts in other north Indian states,Himachali parents are better informed andmore demanding of the schooling system(e.g. they have views on teaching methodsand the right amount of homework).Parents’ demands are felt not only at thevillage level, but also ‘higher up’ in the ad-ministrative machinery and political sys-tem, not least in the State Assembly. Onedistrict official related to us how, duringthe 1998 elections, polling had to be con-ducted in a single day as parents wouldnot tolerate schools being closed for twodays in a row.

‘Is it true that in my constituency,there is a single-teacher

government school?’

(Question asked in the StateAssembly on 4/4/95.)

One key link in this virtuous circle isparental education. Early efforts to pro-mote schooling in Himachal Pradesh haveensured that, today, the average father andeven mother of primary-school childrenhave at least some education. This makesit much easier for them not only to createa learning environment at home, but alsoto establish a rapport with the teachers, tomonitor the quality of the local school, totake action when standards are falling, todemand better facilities from politicalleaders, and so on. In this and other ways,the virtuous circle of state initiative andpublic response is an essential aspect ofHimachal Pradesh’s journey towards uni-versal elementary education.

9.5. ConcludingRemarks

The schooling revolution in HimachalPradesh is one of the most enlighteningdevelopments of the post-independenceperiod in the field of elementary education.

Himachal Pradesh

126

MANAGEMENT

SOCIETY

TEACHER PARENT

A great deal remains to be done: edu-cation at the upper-primary level is still farfrom universal (especially for girls),pockets of backwardness persist even atthe primary level, and the quality of edu-cation is below many parents’ expecta-tions. But what has already been achievedis impressive, and provides a solid found-ation for further progress. And the virtuouscircle of state intervention and public res-ponse is likely to be consolidated aseducation levels among parents continueto increase rapidly in the near future.

We end with a few general remarks onthe broader significance of this story. First,it is worth noting that much of what wehave said about schooling in HimachalPradesh also applies to other kinds oflocal public services. Many H.P. villages,for instance, have lively anganwadis, incontrast with the other north Indian stateswhere anganwadis are mostly non-functional. There are similar contrasts interms of a whole range of local publicservices, from health centres to fair-priceshops and electricity supply. This obser-vation is consistent with the line ofanalysis pursued in this chapter, since thesocial conditions that have facilitated theexpansion of schooling are also likely tobe favourable to the provision of othertypes of collective facilities.

Second, Himachal Pradesh’s successseems to fit in a broader pattern of rapidexpansion of education throughout theHimalayan region (more precisely, the hillregion of north and north-east India).Consider, for instance, the list of Indianstates with more than 85 per cent schoolattendance in the 6-14 age group. Exceptfor Kerala and Goa, all these statesbelong to this region: Himachal Pradesh,Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and theJammu region of ‘Jammu and Kashmir’(data for Kashmir are not available). Otherparts of the Himalayan region are alsodoing well. For instance, the hill region ofUttar Pradesh is way ahead of the rest ofthe state. And even in Arunachal Pradesh(a remote tribal area where 99 per cent ofwomen were illiterate as recently as 1961),school attendance is well above the Indianaverage, reflecting remarkable progressin recent years. This pattern, again, isconsistent with our earlier analysis, given

that many of the enabling features we haveidentified for Himachal Pradesh (includinghigh government expenditure and a favour-able social context) apply to other parts ofthe Himalayan region as well.

Third, there seems to be an interestingcontrast between Himachal Pradesh andKerala when it comes to the politics ofmass education. Both regions have comeclose to universal elementary education,but through different routes. HimachalPradesh, we have argued, has benefitedfrom favourable social conditions, particu-larly in the form of relatively homogeneousvillage communities and a strong traditionof civic cooperation. Kerala, on the otherhand, started off with a highly inegalitarianand oppressive social structure, and it ispolitical action that has made it possibleto overcome this initial obstacle againstmass education. There are also someinteresting similarities in the twoapproaches, especially the virtuous circleof state initiative and public response.

Finally, the social conditions that havefacilitated the schooling revolution inHimachal Pradesh are obviously difficultto ‘replicate’ in other contexts. But thisdoes not detract from the possibility oflearning from that experience. Aside frompointing to many useful directions of publicaction, this experience also underlines thelink between education, democracy andequity that has been a recurrent theme ofthis report.

Himachal Pradesh

127

Words in common usage not explained in the text :

adivasi tribalbanyan vestbeedi tobacco rolled in a tobacco leaf to be smokedbhatti kilnbigha a measure of land (ranging from 0.25 to 0.625 acre)chana gramchappals sandalschimni chimneydaal lentilsdaru liquordaroga constabledharamsala resthouse for pilgrims/travellersdhobi washermangoonda hooliganguruji teacherhisab-kitab accountsjari gold threadworkjhuggi hutkachcha structure which is not paccakhichdi rice and lentils cooked togetherkholi hut/small roomkhurpi small gardening toolkunji guide-booklathi club, stickmahila mandal women’s groupmantra incantationpaan betel leafpacca permanent structure made of bricks or stonepanchayat village councilpanchayati raj local self-governance by village councilpanchayat ghar place where panchayat meeting is heldpurdah system of veiling the face of a woman in the presence of menfolkraksha bandhan popular festival where sisters tie a talisman (rakhi) on the wrist of their brothersroti breadsabzi vegetablesarkari governmentalsarpanch village headmanshiksha educationsuraksha securityswasthya healthzila parishad district council

The PROBE report makes use of a number of background papers and invited contributions. These are listed in the firsttwo sections of this bibliographical note. Other sources are listed in the third section.

Banerji, Rukmini, ‘Don’t Blame It on Poverty Alone’ (published inBusiness Standard, 23 December 1995).

— ‘Why Don’t Children Complete Primary School: A Case Study ofa Low-income Neighbourhood in Delhi’ (published inEconomic and Political Weekly, 9 August 1997).

Bhatty, Kiran, ‘Educational Deprivation in India: A Survey of FieldInvestigations’ (published in Economic and Political Weekly,4 July and 10 July 1998).

Bhatty, K., De, A., Drèze, J.P., Shiva Kumar, A.K., Mahajan, A.,Noronha, C., Pushpendra, Rampal, A., and Samson, M.,‘Class Struggle’ (published in India Today, 13 October 1997).

Bihari, Daisy, ‘Primary Schooling in Orissa: A Field Study’.

Chakrabarti, Anindita and Banerjea, Niharika, ‘Primary Educationin Himachal Pradesh: A Case Study of Kinnaur District’(forthcoming in Economic and Political Weekly).

De, Anuradha, Drèze, Jean, Noronha, Claire, and Samson, Meera,

‘Notes on Schooling in Ambedkar Nagar, New Delhi’.

Drèze, Jean, ‘The Schooling Revolution in Himachal Pradesh’.

Goswami, Anomita, ‘Field Report: Ajmer and Bikaner districts,

Rajasthan’.

Goyal, Sangeeta, ‘Primary Education in Himachal Pradesh’.

Noronha, Claire, ‘Private Schools for the Less Privileged’.

— ‘Private Schools for the Low-income Group: A Case Study of a

Low-income Area in Delhi’.

Srivastava, Snigdha, ‘The State of Primary Education in Bihar: A

Field Study’.

2. Invited notes

Banerji, Rukmini, ‘Schooling in Ambedkar Nagar: Teachers’ Viewsand Parents’ Perceptions’.

Baviskar, Amita, ‘Reading and Rioting’.

Bhatia, Bela, ‘Primary Education and the Naxalite Movement inCentral Bihar: A Note’.

Bhatty, Zarina, ‘Educational Backwardness in Mewat: SomeObservations’.

Bondroit, M., ‘Gender Relations and Schooling: Himachal Pradeshvs. Haryana’.

Burra, Neera, ‘Child Labour and Education: A Note’.

Chaudhri, D.P., ‘Children and Schools in Major States of India,1961-1991’.

Ghosh, Arun, ‘Basic Education, Total Literacy Campaign andDevelopment’.

Gupta, Snehlata, ‘My Experience as a Teacher in a GovernmentSchool’.

Jayaram, Keerti, ‘Some Aspects of a Primary School MathematicsProgramme’.

1. PROBE background papers

Jha, Abhas Kumar, ‘School Meals: Promises and Pitfalls’.

John, G., ‘Village School: Can This be an Alternative’.

Kaul, Venita, ‘On Training to be a Teacher’.

Khadria, Binod, ‘Child Labour: Whither Tagore’s “Heaven OfFreedom”?’

Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi, Interview with Mr Rampal Singh, GeneralSecretary, All India Primary Teachers’ Federation and GeneralSecretary of UP Primary Teachers’ Union.

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Kulkarni, Veena, ‘Why they Drop Out: Reasons for Lower LiteracyAmong Girls’.

Kumar, Krishna, ‘Colonial Legacies’.

Lokshala Team, ‘Lokshala’.

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Mehta, Aditi, ‘Total Literacy Campaign in Rajasthan’.

Muzammil, Mohammad, ‘The History of the Goal of UniversalElementary Education’.

Nambissan, Geetha, ‘Social Discrimination and the Schooling ofDalit Children’.

Noronha, Anjali, ‘Experiences from Eklavya’.

Omvedt, Gail, ‘Brahmanic Education’.

Prabhu, K. Seeta, ‘Financing Education in India: Recent Trends’.

Raina, Vinod, ‘The `Seekhna-Sikhana’ Approach in MadhyaPradesh: Partnership between Government and NGOs inElementary Education’.

Ramachandran, V. K., ‘School Education in Kerala’.

Rao, Nitya, ‘Literacy Movements in Pudukkottai’.

Nitya, S., ‘The Marushalas in Western Rajasthan’.

Senapaty, Manju, ‘Is DPEP Moving Towards Achievement of itsObjectives’.

Shourie, C.K., ‘Primary Education in Northern Madhya Pradesh’.

Singh, Alaka, ‘Determinants of School Achievements: FindingsBased on the DPEP Survey’.

Sipahimalani, Vandana, ‘The Determinants of Schooling in RuralIndia: Findings Based on the NCAER/UNDP Survey’.

Talib, Mohammad, ‘Social Class in the Classroom: A School in aWorkers’ Settlement’.

Tilak, J.B.G., ‘The Myth of Free Elementary Education’.

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Unni, Jeemol, ‘The Economic Returns to Elementary Education’.

Varghese, N.V., ‘Determinants of Learner Achievement’.

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Burra, Neera (1995), Born to Work: Child Labour in India (Delhi:

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Below are some explanatory notes pertaining to specific chartspresented in the text. They are best read together with the ‘SurveyMethodology’ section.

Chart 2.1 (Educational attainments): Calculated from InternationalInstitute for Population Sciences (1995a), Table 3.8, andInternational Institute for Population Sciences (1995b), Table 3.6.Similar information is also available from Census of India 1991;there are small discrepancies between the two sources, but thebasic patterns are similar.

Chart 2.5 (Number of illiterates): Calculated using populationestimates and literacy rates (age 5+) from Bose (1991), pp.48-50. The 5+ literacy rate for 1991 was calculated by assuming thatthe ratio of 7+ to 5+ literacy rates was the same in 1991 and 1981.The proportion of the population in the 5+ age group was obtainedfrom census data for 1951-81, and from Sample RegistrationSystem for 1991.

Chart 2.6 (Literacy rates in China and India): The backwardprojection method ignores the fact that survival rates tend to behigher for literates than for non-literates. However, in practice itseems to work reasonably well; for further details, see Drèze andLoh (1995).

Chart 2.8 (Estimates of child labour): Based on Census of India1981 (Series 1, Social and Cultural Tables, Part IV-A, Table C-4,pp. 466-7); National Sample Survey Organisation (1997), Table4.5, p.14; National Council of Applied Economic Research (1996b),Appendix 3.22, page A-352 (the NCAER figure relates to the 6-14age group). The definition of ‘workforce participation’ variesbetween different surveys. Roughly speaking, it is meant to referto participation in any economic activity (including household work)for a pre-specified number of days in the year, or with reasonable‘regularity’.

Chart 2.9 (Work patterns of out-of-school children): Out-of-schoolchildren include both never-enrolled and drop-out children. Thedata for these two sub-samples were aggregated using theproportions of never-enrolled and drop-out children in the samplehouseholds as weights.

Chart 2.10 (Average cost of sending a child to school): Figures atcurrent prices have been converted to 1996-7 prices using the

Wholesale Price Index (from Economic Survey 1996-97, p. S-67).The PROBE and NCAER estimates, unlike the NSS estimates,include additional clothing expenses due to schooling. TheNCAER-based figure excludes Uttar Pradesh.

Chart 2.11 (School availability): Based on the Sixth All-IndiaEducational Survey (NCERT, 1997a), Tables V.10, V.13 and V.22.

Chart 3.2 (Proportion of never-enrolled children): The NSS figureis from National Sample Survey Organisation (1993), Report No.365 (42nd round, July 1986-June 1987), part II. The PROBE figurefor 1996 has been adjusted for under-reporting of girls (see SurveyMethodology, section 4); the unadjusted proportion of never-enrolled children is 16 per cent, instead of 19 per cent.

Chart 3.5 (How out-of-school children spend a 12-hour day): SeeChart 2.9.

Chart 3.6 (Schooling is expensive): Costs of ‘clothing’ are theestimated additional costs (of clothing) due to school attendance.

Chart 4.1 (School facilities are improving): The figures for 1986are calculated from Fifth All-India Educational Survey datapresented in Tyagi (1993). There is some doubt about the reliabilityof the figure for ‘blackboards’ in 1986, which we were unable toverify from the original source.

Chart 4.2 (‘If all the children were at school’): Pupils per teacherare calculated by dividing the child population of the sample villages(age 6-10) by the number of teachers appointed in primary sections.The child population is estimated from the total population of thesample villages by assuming that, in each state, the proportion ofthe population in the 6-10 age group is the same in the samplevillages as in the state as a whole. The state-specific agedistributions are taken from Government of India (1996) (theproportion of the population in the 5-9 age group was used as aproxy for the proportion aged 6-10). A similar procedure was usedto calculate the number of pupils per pacca classroom.

Chart 4.5 (Pupil-teacher and child-teacher ratios in the PROBEvillages) : (1) Government teachers ‘appointed in primary sections’include those working in primary sections of upper-primary orsecondary schools. (2) The child population in the 6-10 age groupis calculated as in Chart 4.2. (3) The pupil-teacher ratios are likely

to be a little on the high side, due to the fact that enrolment dataare exaggerated in many schools (see chapter 7). (4) Followingon the discussion in the text, two further differences between pupil-teacher and child-teacher ratios should be noted. First, the child-teacher ratio includes children currently enrolled in private schoolsin the numerator. The argument for doing so is that, in rural areas,children enrolled in private schools are really ‘discouraged’ pupilsof government schools (see chapter 8), who should not be ignoredin judging the adequacy of the latter. The reader who finds thisargument unconvincing can easily adjust the figures for himselfor herself (noting that private-school children represent about 18per cent of all enrolled children in the PROBE villages). Second,even with universal enrolment in government schools, the 6-10age group would not exactly coincide with the child populationenrolled at the primary stage, due to early enrolment and repetition.In practice, this is a minor qualification, because repetition isuncommon at the primary stage and early enrolment iscompensated by early exit.

Chart 4.6 (Teacher activities at school): Based on all governmentschools with a primary section.

Chart 5.1 (Social background of teachers and students): Data onthe social composition of children enrolled in government schoolsare derived from the sub-sample of currently-enrolled children.

Chart 7.1 (Unfinished agenda of Operation Blackboard): Basedon government primary schools (the target group for the first phaseof Operation Blackboard).

Chart 7.2 (Coverage of incentive schemes): The left-hand sidepanel is based on government schools with primary sections.

Chart 7.3 (Frequency of inspection): Based on governmentschools with primary sections.

Chart 7.4 (The inspection process): See chart 7.3.

Chart 7.5 (Regional contrasts): Based on all government schoolswith primary sections. This table should be taken as indicative,as the state-specific samples are relatively small.

Chart 8.1 (Dry ration scheme): Based on government schoolswith primary sections.

Chart 8.2 (Government vs. private schools, part 1): Based on thesub-sample of currently-enrolled children.

Chart 8.3 (Government vs. private schools, part 2): Based on allschools with primary sections (hence some figures in this tablediffer slightly from similar figures elsewhere, based on primaryschools only).

Chart 8.4 (Comparative costs of schooling): Based on the sub-sample of currently-enrolled children.

Chart 9.1 (Declining illiteracy in Himachal Pradesh): Calculatedfrom census data (Social and Cultural Tables, various years).The literacy rates for Himachal Pradesh in 1951 and 1961 werereconstructed from district-level data. The 1961 figure is notentirely reliable.

Chart 9.2 (Educational achievements in Himachal Pradesh):Literacy rates are from Census of India 1991 (unpublished figures).Figures on completion of classes 5 and 8 are calculated fromNFHS data presented in International Institute for PopulationSciences (1995b), Table 3.6. The PROBE figures for schoolingstatus of girls in 1996 are adjusted for under-counting of femalechildren (see Survey Methodology, section 4).

Chart 10.1 (Trends in education expenditure): Calculated fromGovernment of India (1995), Statements II and VI. The figures for1995-6 are calculated (in the same way) from Selected EducationalStatistics (Department of Education, 1997) and Economic Survey1996-97 (Ministry of Finance, 1997). ‘Education expenditure’ refersto total expenditure on education (by Education Department andother Departments) on revenue account, plan and non-plan.

Chart 10.2 (Pupil-teacher ratios in the PROBE states): Theseratios refer to government primary schools.

Chart 10.3 (Pupil-teacher ratio in India): See Chart 10.2.

Chart 10.4 (Focus on elementary education vis-à-vis other issues):The sample dailies are: Indian Express (New Delhi), Hindu(Gurgaon), Hindustan Times (New Delhi), Independent (Bombay),Observer of Business and Politics, Patriot (New Delhi), Pioneer(New Delhi), Statesman (New Delhi), Sunday Observer (NewDelhi), Telegraph (Calcutta), Times of India (New Delhi), Tribune(Chandigarh), Business Standard (Calcutta), Business Line(Gurgaon), Dataline Business (Calcutta), Economic Times (Delhi),Financial Express (New Delhi).

Chart 10.5 (Focus on elementary education vis-à-vis defence):See Chart 10.4.

Explanatory Notes

147

Chapter 1

p. 2: Population of PROBE states: Bose (1991), p. 57.

p. 4: Infant mortality rates in Kerala and Madhya Pradesh: SampleRegistration System Bulletin, 32(2), April 1998, p.1 (the referenceyear is 1996).

p. 6: Tagore on education: Tagore (1908). The definition quoted inthe text is not verbatim, but attempts to convey the spirit of hisextended comment on the meaning of education.

Chapter 2

p. 9: (1) Literates, age 7 and above: Census of India 1991 (seee.g. Tyagi, 1993, p.24). (2) Proportion of adults who have completedeight years of schooling: Calculated from NFHS data presentedin International Institute for Population Sciences (1995a, 1995b).(3) Number and proportion of out-of-school children: Calculatedfrom NFHS data in International Institute for Population Sciences(1995), p.56, and age-distribution data in NCERT (1997a), p.10.

p. 11: Proportion of districts where a majority of children aged 10-14 are illiterate: Census of India 1991 (unpublished data suppliedby the Office of the Registrar-General).

p. 11: Gender gaps in literacy: Human Development Report 1998,pp. 131-3.

p. 14: Number of child labourers: Bandhua Mukti Morcha, quotedin The Times of India, 17 August, p.5. Coalition Against ChildLabour (1997), ‘Public Hearing on Child Labour: Reference Kit’,document prepared for the 2nd National Convention of ChildLabourers, New Delhi, 30-1 March 1997.

p. 17: School availability in hamlets: NCERT (1997a), Table V.13(pp. 28-9).

Chapter 5

p. 55: Proportion of female teachers in Kerala and Sri Lanka:Government of India (1997), p.42; Human Development in SouthAsia 1998, p. 118.

Chapter 6

p. 81: Quotation : Krishna Kumar (1989).

Chapter 7

p. 86: Interdependence of Operation Blackboard components:Government of India (1994), Development of Education in India1993-94 (New Delhi: Deparment of Education), p.50.

p. 94: Literacy rates and school attendance in the UP hills: Censusof India 1991 (unpublished data supplied by the Office of theRegistrar-General).

Chapter 8

p. 99: Number of NFE centres in India: Department of Education,Annual Report 1996-7, p. 36.

p. 101: Proportion of population living in hamlets of less than 300persons and more than one km away from the nearest school:calculated from NCERT (1997a), Table V.10.

Chapter 9

p. 115: Literacy rates in Himachal Pradesh and India: Census ofIndia, Social and Cultural Tables, various years.

p. 116: Settlement pattern in Himachal Pradesh: NCERT (1997a),Table V-9. The proportion of the rural population living in villagesof less than 300 residents is 31 per cent in Himachal Pradesh,compared with 3.4 per cent in India as a whole.

p. 117: Literacy rates in Jhunjhunu: Census of India 1991 (seeTyagi, 1993, p.38). Prominence of army jobs in Jhunjhunu: ManabiMajumdar (1997).

p. 117: Literacy rates in Punjab: Census of India 1991(unpublished data supplied by the Office of the Registrar-General).

p. 120: Proportion of single-teacher schools in Himachal Pradesh:1986 figure from Fifth All-India Educational Survey (see Tyagi,1993, p. 88). The 1995 figure is from the HP government’sresponse to Question 284 in the State Assembly, 1995.

p. 127: States with more than 85 per cent school attendance:NFHS data from International Institute for Population Sciences(1995a), p. 56. Literacy rates in Arunachal Pradesh, 1961: censusdata presented in Bose (1991), p.112.

Chapter 10

p. 131: Incidence of private schools in Lucknow: Kingdon (1994).

p. 138: Lenin on literacy: quoted in Ramachandran (1996), p.256.

Sources

149

page

Chapter 1

1 Elementary education: right or privilege? 32 The PROBE survey 7

Chapter 2

1 School education in Kerala (V.K.Ramachandran) 132 Child Labour in Firozabad 16

Chapter 3

1 Economic returns to elementary education (J.B.G.Tilak and Jeemol Unni) 212 The Total Literacy Campaign (Arun Ghosh and Nitya Rao) 253 Pupil achievements in Madhya Pradesh 284 Schooling in Ambedkar Nagar (Rukmini Banerji) 305 The child mothers 316 Anganwadis can help 317 Rokkaiya Begum’s uniform 328 Health and schooling (Nidhi Mehrotra) 338 My schooling was ended (Veena Kulkarni) 36

Chapter 4

1 Distant schools 392 ‘Dripping roofs.. damaged walls ..dampened learning’ 403 School or sty? 434 ‘Akele hain, yeh bacchon ko dekhe ya padave’ 455 Pupil achievements and school quality (N.V.Varghese) 467 Educational backwardness in Mewat (Zarina Bhatty) 498 What is it like to be a dalit child in school today? (Geetha Nambissan) 509 Gender bias in primary-school textbooks (Nidhi Mehrotra) 5110 An oppressive environment: how can a child grow 52

Chapter 5

1 Is there a case for female teachers? 552 On training to be a teacher (Venita Kaul) 563 Teaching in a government school (Snehlata Gupta) 59

4 Non-teaching duties 615 Why PROBE schools had few female teachers ? 626 Duty calls - but faintly 637 Accountability mechanisms and their weaknesses 65

Chapter 6

1 The burden of empty schoolbags 702 Social class in the classroom (Mohammad Talib) 743 Of torn texts and difficult ones 764 How Language is tought 785 Anti-copying Acts 80

Chapter 7

1 Colonial legacies (Krishna Kumar) 852 Education (mis) management in Northern Madhya Pradesh (Chandra Kant Shourie) 863 Too little and very late 874 An inspector turns up 906 Enrolment patterns: myths and reality 92

Chapter 8

1 Two Shiksha Karmis 982 A functioning NFE centre 1003 Child labour and elementary education (Neera Burra) 1014 Diwan Singh’s joy and Ruppo’s pain 1055 Marushalas in Western Rajasthan (Nitya S.) 1096 Some pointers from the MVF experience (Shantha Sinha) 1117 Lokshala (The Lokshala team) 1128 Retired clerk turns dedicated teacher 113

Chapter 9

1 Even eldest daughters in poor families go to school 1182 A model school 1193 Inside the classroom 1204 Gender relations and schooling : Himachal Pradesh vs.Haryana (Marie-Eve Bondroit) 1225 Social structure of hill villages 125

Chapter 10

1 The schooling transition in Khetolai 1302 Elementary education in party manifestoes 1324 Why elementary education is not a priority (Gail Omvedt) 134

page

Chart 2.1: Educational attainments 9

Chart 2.2: Average years of schooling 9

Chart 2.3: Literacy rates: social and regional disparities 11

Chart 2.4: Female education: consequences of neglect 11

Chart 2.5: Number of illiterates 12

Chart 2.6: Literacy rates in China and India, 1990-1 12

Chart 2.7: Parents’ attitudes to education 14

Chart 2.8: Estimates of child labour (all-India, rural) 16

Chart 2.9: Work patterns of out-of-school children 16

Chart 2.10: Average cost of sending a child to school 17

Chart 2.11: School availability (1993) 17

Chart 3.1: Why parents want to educate their children 19

Chart 3.2: Proportion of never-enrolled children, age 6-14 19

Chart 3.3: Parental motivation and social background 20

Chart 3.4: Educational aspirations 21

Chart 3.5: How out-of-school children spend a 12-hour day 29

Chart 3.6: Schooling is expensive 32

Chart 3.7: Never-enrolled children 36

Chart 3.8: Drop-out children 37

Chart 4.1: School facilities are improving 39

Chart 4.2: ‘If all children were at school’ 40

Chart 4.3: State of school buildings 41

Chart 4.4: School facilities in the PROBE villages 42

Chart 4.5: Pupil-teacher and child-teacher ratios in the PROBE villages 44

Chart 4.6: Teacher activities at school 47

Chart 4.7: Reported teaching methods 48

Chart 5.1: Social background of teachers and students 54

Chart 5.2: Non-teaching duties 61

Chart 5.3: Village education committee 66

Chart 7.1: Unfinished agenda of Operation Blackboard 87

Chart 7.2: Coverage of incentive schemes 88

Chart 7.3: Frequency of inspection 89

Chart 7.4: The inspection process 89

Chart 7.5: Regional contrasts 93

Chart 8.1: Dry ration scheme 96

Chart 8.2: Government vs. private schools, Part 1: Pupil characteristics 102

Chart 8.3: Government vs. private schools, Part 2: The school environment 103

Chart 8.4: Comparative costs of schooling 105

Chart 9.1: Declining illiteracy in Himachal Pradesh 116

Chart 9.2: Educational achievements in Himachal Pradesh 116

Chart 9.3: Parents’ attitudes to education: Himachal Pradesh 117

Chart 9.4: Teachers’ perceptions of male and female children 121

Chart 10.1: Trends in education expenditure 132

Chart 10.2: Pupil-teacher ratios in the PROBE states 133

Chart 10.3: Pupil-teacher ratio in India: 1950 to 1995 133

Chart 10.4: Focus on elementary education vis-à-vis other issues 139

Chart 10.5: Focus on elementary education vis-à-vis defence 139

1. Sampling Procedure and Related Matters

1.1. Sample villages

The villages covered by the PROBE survey (called ‘PROBEvillages’ in the text) are essentially an extended sub-sample of arandom sample of villages studied in 1994 by the National Councilof Applied Economic Research.1

For each of the PROBE states (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan,Uttar Pradesh), villages were selected from the NCAER samplethrough stratified random sampling. The districts were groupedby level of female literacy, and sample districts were chosen atrandom from each group. Within the selected districts, villageswere chosen at random among all NCAER villages in the 300 to3,000 population range.2 The size restriction was to ensure thateach village is large enough for a primary school to be viable, butnot so large as to make the survey exercise unmanageable. Notethat, in rural India, about two-thirds of the population live in villageswithin that population range.

The NCAER sub-sample, selected as above (122 villages in all),was extended as follows. For every other sub-sample village, theinvestigators also surveyed one ‘neighbouring village’, i.e. thenearest village within the same 300 to 3,000 population range.This procedure was adopted to increase the sample size atrelatively low cost. Taken together, the NCAER sub-sample andneighbouring villages constitute our ‘sample villages’.

In each village, the investigators began with a detailed survey ofall schools with a primary section (the ‘sample schools’). In the188 sample villages, 236 such schools were identified: 195government schools and 41 private schools. For further details ofthe composition of the sample schools, see p.7 at the end ofchapter 1. Basic details of other education facilities (includingnon-formal education centres, adult literacy classes, etc.) werealso recorded.

1.2. Sample households

For each of the ‘NCAER sub-sample’ villages, a household listingwas readily available from the earlier NCAER survey. In each of

these villages, we selected 12 households from that list throughcircular random sampling. A list of ‘replacement households’was also drawn (also through random sampling). Wheneverinvestigators were unable to find a household from the first list,they looked for a household from the second list. Note that nohousehold survey was conducted in the ‘neighbouring’ villages.

Since the main focus of the household survey was on primaryschooling, households without any child in the 6-12 age groupwere skipped (in such cases, investigators moved to the closestneighbour).

Though the household survey aimed at covering 12 householdsin each of the 122 ‘NCAER sub-sample villages’, the actual samplesize is smaller. This is partly because the investigators wereunable to complete the full round of 12 households in some cases(they were instructed to give priority to the school survey), andpartly because questionnaires deemed to be of insufficient qualitywere discarded at the data-verification stage. The data set usedin this report has 1,221 households for the PROBE states.

1.3. Children sub-samples

In each household, PROBE investigators collected basicinformation (age, gender, schooling status, etc.) about everyhousehold member in the 0-18 age group. In addition, theycollected detailed information about (and, whenever possible,conducted direct interviews with) a sub-sample of children,selected as follows. All the children aged 6-12 in the householdwere initially grouped in three categories: ‘currently-enrolled’, ‘drop-out’ and ‘never-enrolled’. In each non-empty category, one child(the child whose name came first in alphabetical order, within thatgroup) was selected for detailed interview.

In the text, the terms ‘random sub-sample of currently-enrolledchildren in the 6-12 age group’ (and correspondingly for ‘drop-out’ and ‘never-enrolled’) refer to these three sub-samples ofchildren. The numbers of children in each sub-sample are asfollows: currently-enrolled 1,066; drop-out 106; never-enrolledchildren 226. Note that these numbers are not proportional to thetotal numbers respectively of currently-enrolled, drop-out andnever-enrolled children in the sample households. This shouldbe clear from the sampling procedure (see also section 4 below).

1.4. Himachal Pradesh

The Himachal Pradesh survey (used in chapter 9) followed exactlythe same procedure as in the other states. The only difference isthat, in Himachal Pradesh, we deliberately surveyed a largernumber of villages (relative to the state population). Taking intoaccount the time constraint and the available number ofinvestigators, we randomly selected 7 out of Himachal Pradesh’s12 districts for investigation (the selected districts were Bilaspur,Chamba, Hamirpur, Kangra, Kullu, Mandi, Simla). In each district,two ‘NCAER sub-sample’ villages were selected. For each sub-sample village, the investigators also visited up to three‘neighbouring villages’, depending on the time available.Altogether, 14 sub-sample villages and 34 neighbouring villageswere covered. These 48 sample villages had 48 governmentschools and 6 private schools.

2. Field Work

The PROBE survey took place between September 1996 andDecember 1996 (sequentially in different states). In each village,the survey began with an unannounced visit to the governmentprimary school, followed by visits to other schools (government orprivate) with primary sections, as well as to other educationfacilities, if any. The ‘village questionnaire’ was then filled with thehelp of the sarpanch or some other knowledgeable individual,followed by the household survey.

3. Survey Questionnaires

Five questionnaires were used in the PROBE survey. Eachquestionnaire had space for both quantitative and qualitative data,as well for the investigators’ personal observations.

Village questionnaire: This questionnaire involved the collectionof basic data on village characteristics, e.g. accessibility, populationsize, social composition, availability of various facilities, and soon. The respondent was usually the sarpanch, or the headteacher,or some other knowledgeable local resident.

Government-school questionnaire: This questionnaire had twoparts. The first part was filled with the help of the headteacher (or,in his or her absence, the senior-most teacher among thosepresent). The main focus, here as elsewhere, was on the primarysection (classes 1 to 5). This part of the questionnaire dealt withmatters such as infrastructural facilities, enrolment data,management problems, relations with parents, etc. The secondpart was addressed to the class-1 teacher (in his or her absence,teachers of successively higher classes were sought), and wasconcerned with his or her background, training, perceptions, workenvironment, teaching methods, etc.

Private-school questionnaire: This questionnaire was much thesame as the government-school questionnaire, with someadditional questions of specific relevance to private schools.

Household questionnaire: This questionnaire had four parts,focusing respectively on (1) the household, (2) one selected‘currently-enrolled’ child (see section 1.3 above), (3) one selected‘drop-out’ child, and (4) one selected ‘never-enrolled’ child. Therespondent was an adult, preferably the mother or father of childrenin the 6-12 age group. When both were available, investigatorswere asked to interview the mother rather than the father, if possible.However, a majority (63 per cent) of the main respondents are infact male, partly because most of the investigators were male andfound it difficult to communicate directly with female respondentsin the prevailing social environment. Part 2 was filled only whenthe household had at least one child in the ‘never-enrolled’category, and similarly with parts 3 and 4 for the other categories.In addition to collecting detailed information about each selectedchild from the main respondent, investigators were asked to makean attempt to interview the child himself or herself. The childinterviews, however, were a disappointment as most youngchildren were shy and investigators had a hard time establishinga rapport with them (except in Himachal Pradesh).

‘NFE centre’ questionnaire: This questionnaire was similar to thegovernment-school questionnaire, but shorter. It was filled withthe help of the NFE-centre instructor.

The PROBE survey placed much emphasis on qualitative dataand personal observations from field investigators. Someinvestigators gave remarkably perceptive accounts of thefunctioning of the sample schools as well as of the predicamentof the sample households. These field notes are extensivelyused in this report, in addition to the presentation of quantitativeinformation.

4. Some Qualifications

We end with a few qualifications about the representativeness ofthe sample, and related matters.

1. The sample size in each state is not quite proportional to thestate population. This bias can be corrected through appropriateweighting of the observations, but we did not attempt to do so asweighting appeared to make little difference for our purposes.

2. The PROBE survey is slightly biased towards smaller villages,as villages with a population over 3,000 were excluded (villageswith a population below 300 were also excluded, but these accountfor a small share of the total population).

3. As mentioned on p. 103, some private schools are likely to havebeen missed. Note, however, that the survey does yield an

Survey Methodology

144

unbiased estimate of the proportion of children enrolled in privateschools, as this estimate is based on household data.

4. The household survey excludes households without any childin the 6-12 age group. In this respect, the sample householdsare not exactly representative of the population as a whole; however,this does not matter for our purposes.

5. As noted earlier, the numbers of children in the ‘currently-enrolled’, ‘drop-out’ and ‘never-enrolled’ sub-samples are notproportional to the total number of currently-enrolled, drop-outand never-enrolled children in the sample households. However,in the few cases where data from these different sub-sampleswere aggregated (e.g. to calculate ‘average hours of work’ — seep. 16), we did correct for this through suitable weighting.

6. The categories ‘currently-enrolled’, ‘drop-out’, and ‘never-enrolled’, which play an important role in our analysis, reflect theschooling status of a child as reported by his or her parents.Because we did not anticipate any ambiguity in this regard, theinvestigators were not given specific instructions on how to dealwith cases of nominal enrolment, i.e. children who are nominallyenrolled but rarely attend school if at all (see p. 91). A reasonablepresumption is that such children were usually recorded as‘currently-enrolled’. The practice of nominal enrolment is likely tohave increased in recent years, e.g. due to food rations andenrolment drives. As a result, current-enrolment figures may givea slightly exaggerated picture of actual school participation (e.g.p. 7). Similarly, the sharp decline in the proportion of ‘never-enrolled’ children between 1986-7 and 1996 (see p. 19) mayreflect, in part, the growing practice of nominal enrolment.3

7. We end by mentioning that the PROBE survey did fall into oneserious trap that has affected many earlier household surveys innorth India: the under-counting of adolescent girls. For instance,the female-male ratio in the 6-14 age group among our 1,221sample households is only 0.75, compared with 0.87 for thePROBE states according to census data.4 This implies that about200 girls in that age group were missed by the survey. Fortunately,this bias affects very few of the results presented in this report.The main issue is how it affects our estimates of the proportionsof girls who are ‘currently-enrolled’, ‘drop-out’ and ‘never-enrolled’(see e.g. p. 7). These estimates have been corrected by assumingthat all the ‘missing girls’ belong to the last two groups, and aredistributed between these two groups in the same proportion asthe girls of the same age who were identified by the survey. Thelogic is that (1) currently-enrolled girls are unlikely to have been‘missed’, and (2) there is no reason to believe that, among non-enrolled girls, ‘drop-out’ girls were more likely to be missed than‘never-enrolled’ girls, or vice-versa.

Notes

1. The findings of the NCAER survey are reported in National Council of

Applied Economic Research (1996a, 1996b). The NCAER’s sampling

procedure and related details are described in National Council of Applied

Economic Research (1996a), chapters 1 and 2.

2. Two to four villages were selected from each district, depending on the

target number of districts in the relevant state. The target number of

districts, in each case, was roughly proportional to the state population.

Note also that, in the original NCAER sample, villages are selected with

probability proportional to size (using Lahiri’s method); this avoids over-

representation of small villages, both in the NCAER sample and in our own

sub-sample.

3. Note, however, that a comparison between 1986-7 NSS data and 1994

NCAER data confirms this trend, even though food rations had not yet

been introduced in 1994 and enrolment drives were still relatively

uncommon.

4. Smoothed age distribution data for 1996 (derived from Census of India

1991, by projection) are available in Government of India (1996).

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145

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