Why our schools are in a sorry state

Crime reporters usually do a better job than the journalists assigned to cover education. Though crime reports are often confined to the details given by the police, one does occasionally come across a report that furnishes a few extra things pointing to the context. Educational reports, on the other hand, stick to the bits given out by officials, showing no curiosity whatsoever about the background. Incomplete, and at times mistaken information is common.

You hardly ever come across a news report that gives you the wider context of an incident or decision. I have countless memories of education reporters showing no interest whatsoever in the origins or the broader contours of a problem or a new measure mooted by the government. Reporters serving the education beat obediently note the points being made by an official and rush to file their story.

A perfect scam

The latest example of this style of educational journalism comes from Uttar Pradesh. A teacher has been found to be drawing her salary from two dozen schools. It is a perfect story to amuse the urban middle-class reader, for it shows how incompetent and corrupt the education system in UP is. No one will be surprised by this. Rather, some readers will chuckle about the state of rural schools in the cow belt — if that is how they are used to naming the Hindi heartland.

And then, there is the crime part of the evolving story. A special task force of the police has identified a small gang of men involved in fraudulent recruitment of teachers. Stories filed from the field — as it is called — report the modus operandi of the gang, how much its members demanded from the teachers who got the jobs, and the amount of public money they have siphoned off from the system. Apparently, an applicant had submitted her certificates to several schools. The gang got hold of them and asked other women to use the name given in these certificates to get appointed.

You can’t expect school news to be spicier than this. What is missing in this news is the tragedy that has befallen one of the best schemes ever launched to boost girls’ education in rural areas.

Fix systemic failures

It was mooted about two decades ago as part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Named after Mahatma Gandhi’s wife, Kasturba, the scheme envisaged providing free residential schools for rural girls who could not complete their primary schooling. Even if they had done just one or two years of primary education, they were given a second chance to come into the system. Many girls who had been sitting at home were able to enrol in a Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) in the block headquarter and avail free boarding and residence for three years. A special curriculum was designed to bring them at par with Grade 6 children within the first six months of enrolment. Over the following three years, they had the opportunity to study up to Grade 8.

The KGBVs flourished across India, and many in UP also did very well. The Mahila Samakhya, a government-sponsored feminist organisation, was given the charge to run some of them. More than a decade ago, when I visited several of these KGBVs, I met some extraordinary teachers who were willing to put in their best despite low, fixed salaries and poor accommodation. The residential facilities and provisions made for the girls were also measly, but spirits were high. Many of these girls had to persuade their parents hard to let them stay away from home. Admirers of the KGBV scheme tried several times to persuade the central government to enhance the status of these schools and give the teachers a career appointment. Nothing happened, and now we have this story of a cruel fraud.

Time to learn a lesson

The fact that the fraud occurred in KGBV schools is completely missing from every report about it. That the KGBV scheme has fallen on bad days is obvious enough.

How severe the crisis of unemployment is among qualified young women and men is also evident from this episode. It has occurred at a time when the schooling system across north India is under great stress. There already was a financial crunch and teacher shortage had been growing for a long time. Now, children and schools are facing a new reality. Lakhs of children have returned with their parents from cities in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and so on, to villages across the Vindhya-Gangetic belt. These children have been studying in schools in languages other than Hindi. Many of them are likely to stay on in their parental villages, at least for now. If government schools are to receive them, additional teachers will have to be recruited immediately, from among locally available young men and women who are qualified to teach.

(Courtesy of Mail Today)

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