When a Right Goes Wrong_ The Unintended Consequences

WHEN A RIGHT GOES WRONG: THE UNINTENDED

CONSEQUENCES OF INDIA’SRIGHTTO

EDUCATION ACT

Gopalkrishnan Iyer and Chris Counihan*

Abstract

Many private schools in India are under threat of closure as a result of the Right to Education Act 2009 (RTE Act). The Act

mandates several input requirements rather than concentrating on learning outcomes. We show that some states are closing private

schools despite government schools themselves failing to meet the mandates. We further argue that the RTE Act has the wrong

priorities and so has failed to realise its mission of quality education, tends to promote disguised false equity and ignores the

compulsory education on an equitable basis, focuses entirely on schooling inputs rather than learning

outcomes. Private unrecognised schools, which offer a significant amount of the country’sbasic

education, are under severe threat of closure following the introduction of the RTE Act, as it

mandates schools to comply with several input-related requirements that require substantial

additional capital investment to match the needs as stated in the Act.

One aim of this article is to develop a compliance index based on the relative degree to which

government schools in Indian states satisfy the RTE Act input criteria as set out in its schedule. The

criteria include such requirements as pupil–teacher ratios of 35:1 in upper primary and 27:1 in

secondary classes, the presence of infrastructure facilities such as a playground and boundary wall,

and the availability of library books and computers. The states where private schools and

that its input-based solutions have not resulted in improved learning; some measures which do seem

to work are briefly described. Section 5 sets out our compliance index, while section 6 considers some

of the results. Section 7 highlights the RTE Act’s failure to uplift quality and how it is unintentionally

reducing access and equity in the Indian education system. Section 8 concludes.

*

Gopalkrishnan Iyer (corresponding author) is a doctoral student at Newcastle University , UK.

Email: [email protected]. Chris Counihan is a visiting lecturer at Newcastle University. Email: chri[email protected]

2. The dismal state of public education and the dawn of the private sector

Opinions on the proper role of private sector participation in India are highly polarised between

skimming and exploitation of poor consumers at the hands of corporations. In the case of education,

there exists a policy paradox, as the government promotes a public–private partnership (PPP) model

through its five-year plans while it frames policies which threaten private educational institutions,

causing some to close (Tooley 2014). Interestingly, the adoption of the PPP model has indirectly

resulted in an exponential growth of low-cost private schools (Chenoy 2013), which has led to

increased teacher numbers (Andrabi et al. 2013), infrastructure development and diverse

management partnerships (Luthra and Mahajan 2013). In light of these trends, it is necessary to

examine the nature of the public and private educational systems in the country.

India’s government schooling network comprises 1.4m schools, spread across 635 districts and

employing close to 4m teachers, making it far and away the most extensive educational service

Government spending on elementary education has increased considerably since the beginning

of the century. Spending on education rose from INR 357.7m (£3.9m) to INR 3,962.2m (£43m) over

the period 2001–13. However, the elevenfold increase in expenditure has not resulted in a

corresponding rise in learning outcomes (Dongre et al. 2014; Prichett and Aiyar 2014).

The demand for private schools stems from a belief that the government schools are not capable

of providing quality education, as evidenced by low test scores and poor learning outcomes as well as

by absent or inefficient teachers. Evidence from the most extensive randomised controlled trial

voucher programme conducted in India (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2015) found positive

effects in favour of achievement in private schools when tests were measured accurately. The

interested reader should consider the careful re-analysis by Tooley (2016) of the study when

a competitive advantage for their children in securing better jobs. Hence, they opt for private schools

and are willing to spend a significant portion of their income on their children’s education. A survey

covering 153 schools in Hyderabad showed that working families earning the minimum wage were

willing to pay around 5 per cent of their monthly income to educate their children in a private school

(Baird 2009). Thus, the evidence suggests that government schools cannot deliver what parents want,

and private schools are bridging the gap in the supply of education.

3. Linking quality to the RTE Act’s requirements

Quality education, according to UNICEF (2000), encompasses learners who are healthy and willing

to learn, protective, safe and gender-sensitive environments, curricula which help the critical

acquisitions of skills in the areas of numeracy and literacy, and a child-centred approach to facilitate

pedagogical stances, nor should it be inhibited by a lack of opportunity to nurture new techniques.

Educationalists often refer to two types of measure of quality improvement, namely input-based

standards and output-based standards. Input-based standards involve creating or improving

infrastructure, supporting the system with more teaching–learning aids or regulating working hours

of teachers. Output-based standards involve measuring how well children learn and their ability to

understand, perform and recall concepts in subjects such as languages, mathematics and sciences. In

this context, we examine the schedule of the Right to Education Act produced by India’sMinistryof

Human Resource Development, which aims to tackle the quality issue (Table 1). Most parameters

listed by the schedule appear to be input-based. Further, the schedule seems to ignore many aspects

of UNICEF’sdefinition of quality education and tends to focus merely on a single aspect, namely the

infrastructure, or teacher qualifications improve the learning outcomes of students. Evidence and

research studies carried out across the globe indicate that neither infrastructure nor more qualified

teachers contribute to higher learning outcomes (Gatto 2010).

In the case of India, the state of Bihar failed to improve learning outcomes of children through the

provision of inputs such as additional teachers, free reading materials books and uniforms under the

flagship Sarva Siksha Abhiyan scheme (Mukerji and Walton 2012). A study by Banerjee and Duflo

(2011) showed that colourfully designed reading and mathematics teaching–learning materials did

not have any impact on learning achievements of rural Indian students. Similarly, the use of flipcharts

did not impact the test scores of children in rural Kenyan primary schools (Paul et al. 2009).

The RTE Act also aims for schools to have small class sizes, and recommends pupil–teacher ratios