How Can a Dirty Broom Make the Place Clean?
An urgent need for 131 million Indian students for better education!
Dr. Bhammy V. Shenoy called me one day in 1999 to introduce Pratham to me. He spoke as if he had known me for a long time. I did not realize that we would be exchanging ideas and work on thought experiments for the follwoing two decades concerning primary education in India. !
In his latest article on Indian school education, he suggests New Educational Policy to ‘fix our primary education’ that was shown to be dysfunctional by Pratham in 2005.
Pratham is a non-governmental Indian organization with a slogan — Every child in school and learning well! They tried to give joyful learning to the underprivileged children between 3 and 5 years old with the hope of bringing them on par with the privileged children. Then they can learn well alongside the privileged children. The mantra — catch them early! Teach them well! They will shine and become Ambedkars of the 21st century !!! My mention of Ambedkar is not for political reasons but my acknowledgment for a life-changing event due to his name. If you wish, you can read a story of mine — Thanks to Ambedkar.
In the following years, we became the house for Pratham’ in New York. In 2003 the 1st New York Pratham fundraiser was hosted at our house with Ms. Waheeda Rahman as the guest. We added many more and multiplied them in the following years. Several people who worked for Pratham then are either my friends or became friends through the Pratham association. Mr. Viral Acahrya, then, now a Professor and former Deputy government of Reserve bank of India, Mr. Srikanth Lanka, a student then and an executive at Google, Mr. Ravi Gulati, a technologist are only a few examples.
Dr. Bhamy Shenoy asked me to develop a village-based model based on the Pratham team’s experience from the slums of Mumbai. We opened Pratham joyful learning centers for children in 300 villages in Vizianagaram District in Andhra Pradesh. Dr. BSR Muthy’s, a physician in Gajapatinagaram, family, and friends provided the needed operational support. Ms. Sai Parma, Dr. Narender, more than a dozen dedicated teachers from the region prepared the ground. Ms. Usha Rane and her team from Maharashtra came to train 300 Balasakhis, friends of the children, to teach them joyful learning. Ms. Anaparthi Padmavathi, a former principal of a school in Maharastra and fluent in Marathi, facilitated the training without any language barrier. My address book was getting filled rapidly with hundreds of people due to my involvement with Pratham. Teachers in the districts tirelessly developed books to teach children below five years based on the Pratham model. We developed a Village Priumnary Education Index, started ranking the 300 schools and used that as an objective guide to increasing performance. We were all bubbling with energy and hoped that our work could transform society through education. Then education can help the upward mobility for the underprivileged. The program was replicated by Pratham in many locations later by Ms. Sunita Burra, Ms. Parveen Sayyad, Ms. Ruhi Rajesh, Dr. Rukmini Benerjee, and others.
Vizianagaram Pratham program was run for three years. It developed a book for teaching the Pratham curriculum in Telugu. The district collector of Vizainagarm was impressed and introduced this to the state government higher officials. Mr. M. Nagarjuna, IAS, liked the program and extended it to the other parts of the state. But unfortunately, he died within a few months after this discussion.
I was told that the government of Andhra Pradesh has taken up the Pratham program model to implement in the state. Dr. Madhav Chavan, one of the founders of Pratham, was made an important member of the government of India’s education policy body. He showed me that there is support Arab world for teaching Arabic in the slums of Mumbai. Ms. Parveen Sayyad told me that she is running the Pratham program in Pakisthan. Back in the USA, the Pratham Gala fundraising dinners have become big events and big donors and celebrities like Ms. Meera Gandhi in New York.
In 2005 they launched the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey to gauge the status of the education system in India. It became the largest annual survey carried out by citizens of India to understand the enrollment and learning of children in India.
ASER Report 2005 said ‘we found that percentage of children enrolled in schools is very high (85–90%+) in most states especially in the 6–10 age group. But, in many states, 50% of children in Std 2 and above, going to government schools, cannot read even simple sentences.
60% of children cannot do simple subtraction, leave alone multiplication and division.
Pratham did not stop at this analysis but has been actively working with various state governments to change this reality. It will go on until December 2010, the deadline for achieving quality universal elementary education declared by Government of India.’ Excerpt from the Pratham report.
In his article, Dr. Bahmy Shenoy points out that based on ASER 2018 report, there is “no significant improvement.’
The Gross Enrolment Ratio at all levels of school education improved in 2019–20 compared to 2018–19, says the report released on 9th July 2021 by Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal
Government spending is rising.
Looking at these data sets and trends, anyone genuinely concerned with India and its primary education will be distributed. I, too, was disturbed. Therefore started looking for reasons and corrections for a better education system that gave me my livelihood.
Several researchers put stress on students’ poverty and a host of disparities in society as a routine leftist argument for the low performance of the school system. Compounding to the other factors, the following need a complete analysis and correction for better performances of the present primary school education.
1. Relatively low educational qualifications of many teachers themselves need considerable attention for better performance in the government schools. Up to 80%, the vast majority, do not clear the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET).
2. Many states have breached the 50% ceiling before and intend to bring more reservations. Those who are low academic performers are becoming teachers, and that is diluting the teaching profession. Their ability to teach well is questionable. A notable example is Tamil Nadu. Its Act of 1993 reserves 69% of the seats in colleges and jobs in the state government.
3. Absentee teachers are one of the biggest problems of the Indian government school system. It can be anywhere between 24% — 46% on any given day.
4. India has 1.2 million K-12 government schools with an estimated 11 million staff. The vast majority of them are in rural areas. Teachers with good salaries try to live in nearby towns and appoint their substitutes for a fraction of their salary from the government. It is sub-infeudation. A feudal lord giving his land to a few more feudal lords and collecting tax is called by this name. This system, widely prevalent during the British regime, led to the deterioration of the agricultural system. There is no data on this, but it is a well-known practice. Therefore even if a qualified teacher is appointed, as the teacher is appointing an unqualified one in his place, the quality of education indeed suffers.
5. Lack of respect for the teaching profession is often seen as a last-choice career option.
And much more information is available to answer why there is a poor performance in government schools. It is clear that the lack of quality teaching results in poor performance of students. Teachers are not expected to make every child a genius but should make them read and do maths at grade level to find their future. For better performance of students, they have to have better teachers with better qualifications.
The reservation system, a boon for the social upliftment of the underprivileged in practice, has become a curse for them to learn well.
So stop reservations for the teaching profession! It has become a self-defeating policy.
Provide the 131 million students in India’s government schools with good teachers.
