Thursday 28 Mar 2024

Wangchuk’s recipe for public education

Educationist Wangchuk who inspired the character Phunshuk Wangdu in 3 Idiots, on being felicitated last week spoke about all-inclusive public education for all

| AUGUST 17, 2018, 08:06 PM IST

After being recognised by government of Maharashtra in Mumbai last week for being awarded the Ramon Magsaysay, education reformer and innovator Sonam Wangchuk spoke about a need for better and all-inclusive public education system for all. Wangchuk is acknowledged the world-over for uniquely systematic, collaborative and community-driven reform of learning systems in Ladakh. The felicities speaker stressed on the need for better and uniform public educational system in India which is all inclusive by engaging students coming from rich and poor communities together; the likes of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark where there are no private schools but only good quality public schools. 

 To follow the laid prescription we need a systemic correction to address the devoid of quality arising out of fund choke and strangulation by bureaucracy. The idea of improving public education in India must not be restricted to infrastructural development alone. Creation of ‘Model schools and ‘Smart classrooms’ installed with LED lighting, cameras, LCD and sound systems will prove a belittler if the public education system shrivels. Higher capital expenditure in school education, relatively higher funding to this sector and market-based accountability may free the flurry.

 Public education in India is letting down our neediest students. Even in the remotest parts of Goa like Pernem, Sanvordem, Sattari and Quepem, public schools are shutting down due to low enrolment. The data from the report on the state of shrinking schools in India published in June 2017 by ‘The Economist’ from 2007-08 to 2015-16 show that though more Indians are attending schools than ever before nearly half of urban children and a fifth of rural ones attend private primary schools. 

 The enrolment in public schools fell from close to 140 mln to below 120 mln and the number in private establishments rose from close to 13 mln to around 80 mln. More particularly, the number of schools with fewer than 50 pupils as a percentage of the total has increased from 25 to about 34 in the recent years. 

 The funding side is one of the pertinent causes of the state of public schools as the budgets for infrastructure are unheard of. Even the basic necessities are unmet. One-third of rural schools in India have no functional toilets. Thousands of girls don’t drink water till they reach home while two-fifths of schools lack even electricity. In India spending on education is 2.7% of GDP for the FY 2018, down from 3.1% in FY13. Budget FY13 allocated Rs. 45613.4 crore to school education and literacy while Rs. 20423 for higher education. In comparison in Budget FY19 of the total education outlay school education got Rs. 50,000 crore and Rs. 35,010 crore to the higher education sector. The relative calculations are very shocking. The outlay for school education has increased by mere 9.61% while higher education by a 71% in last 5 years from FY13 to FY19 periods.

 The other issue is of over-regulation, more specifically the nature and the magnitude of bureaucratic bloat our public schools carry. 

Caught among thicket of rules and regulations the growth of this sector has hampered. Vikas Jhunjhunwala, founder, Sunshine Schools in a publication of the ‘Centre for Civil Society’ rightly urges that the three governmental roles of policy making, regulation and service delivery combined in the Indian education sector needs to be separated into different entities with an “arms-length” relationship between them. 

It is thus important that the local governments empower citizenry and a culture is created that promotes citizen participation in the planning and  reform implementation. In Madhya Pradesh it was demonstrated that the decentralised governance has increased the probability of a child completing class 5 by 21% between FY92 and FY99 periods while Delhi UT provides the most contemporary example of how school education can flower natives abilities by increased funding and effective policy making. States like Punjab and Rajasthan are trying public-private partnership models like the Charter Schools in America, run by private outfits but funded by the government. 

 One of the best accounts of community–driven school reform is documented by Douglas Harris and Matthew Larsen in July 2018 examining the post-Katrina school reform on long-term effects on a range of student outcomes in the US. 

After Hurricane Katrina devastated an New Orleans, Louisiana in 2005, almost all public schools were turned to autonomous non-profit management organizations working under performance contracts. Schools now decided the curriculum, extracurricular to offer and what food to serve children whiles the Principals choose their  teachers and let go of weak ones. 

New system allowed schools to operate with substantially more freedom to set their rules. Outcomes were tracked, worst were closed and successful ones expanded. More than a decade later it is documented that reforms improved the quantity, quality and equity of schooling in the city on almost every available measure. The reforms also apparently reduced educational inequality by race and income on most measures.

 Engineer turned educationist Wangchuk inspired the character “Phunshuk Wangdu” in the film ‘3 Idiots’, on some other occasion had remarked that ‘India needs good quality mass education where public schools like oceans could help as private schools are like ponds’. Truly for all of us, the oceans should matter more.  

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