September 5 is observed as Teachers’ Day as it marks the birthday of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan a scholar, philosopher, and ex-president of the Republic of India. The significance of this day is observed as the Student-Teacher Solidarity Participation in the day as thousands of students and teachers put on black bands in protest against the withdrawal of education in the present state.
Through educational means, edition towards democratic ends, Tim Singh invoked the language of India’s first Education Commission led by Dr Radhakrishnan. His later mentor, the Chairperson of the Basic Education Committee in 1938, delightful Dr Zakir Husain was one of the founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia.
“Every individual has the right to develop himself within the boundaries of democracy. Totalitarian regimes had control over education as an important factor in their consolidation in power. Mental hindrances are in place which slowly inhibits the practice of education into an immense machine of state domestication. Education as such is the responsibility of the state, but state partnership works in promotion and not control of the practices within educational institutions….Increase in knowledge always requires an environment of intellectual dissent”
Most recently, however, an alarming trend of centralization and extension of the control of the Union government over many issues has become apparent. Its central authorities exploit the socialist legacy to implement the further commercialization agenda, allowance of gross stratification of public system, premature vocationalization (which seem caste specific) of the working class and alteration and politicization of educational material. The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) serves as an example of an overarching framework encompassing new directives given special focus to institutions or states. Even more strangely, despite education being a “concurrent” subject in the Constitution of India, it seems like the government is trying to cut out the best states into submission.
As, for instance, two years back some teachers of the University of Delhi had their eye towards students of Kerala constituting the highest educational indicators who landed up in the university through cut off system taking in twelve grade marks as ‘pawns’ sent by the state board conspiracy known as ‘marks jihad’. In addition, the next year when officials shifted to a modified centralized entrance test that favors on CBSE syllabus as opposed to other students, with the majority of them being CBSE students, the Kerala ‘anomaly’ was then declared to be no longer existing. For example, there were no issues voiced where students from Bihar and Haryana were concerned in being covered under the same issue.
Funding ‘exemplar’ schools
Both the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been experiencing delays on centrally sponsored schemes for long periods, even receiving outstanding balances from the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SMSA). The scheme aims at providing complete schooling opportunities to every school-aged child, with an emphasis on 6 to 14 years of age, in line with the provisions put on the Right to Education Act. The funding for such projects is in most cases shared in ne ratio of 60:40 .This gives about 3.2 Lakhs as central support on an average per school. Such pressure had indeed been exercised both states to cost-share which is to implement the scheme of selected PM-SHRI schools. However, this scheme required cost-sharing of 40 percent of a much higher amount with additional pressures to adopt the CBSE curriculum to conform to NEP.
Currently, the budget is putting avast amount of money to the centrally preferred scheme of the ‘exemplar’ PM-SHRI while cutting down the amount of budgetary allocation to SMSA. This domain is known as shell allocation under the scheme where it is described as more or less expenditure by Center for Budget Governance Accountability on only that period. As per an analysis by Center for Budget Governance and Accountability, of the central budget allocations between the years 2019-20 and 2024-25, while the share of funding to ‘exemplar’ schools increased from 19 percent to 29 percent, the share of SMSA dropped from 62 percent to 51 percent in the Department of School Education budget.
Now, the number of PM-SHRI schools selected is 8,108— it is worth noting that this is less than one percent of the total 11.6 lakh schools that are eligible for funding under the SSA. Each PM SHRI school comes with a separate budget of around rupees 9750000 cada year. This is further complicated by the rebranding, and it results in a further gradation of the public education system.
It is anticipated that the newly christened Kendriya Vidyalas along with the Navodaya Vidyalayas, which have been brought into this fold, will also benefit only a select group of individuals at the expense of others. Schools from States that are being brought under this Over-centralization model will be cut off with the State Boards, and at the same time, there would be an unwritten and convenient seeding of the neo-liberal elements of the fostering of education policy. These are already ‘approved’, and having received the ‘excessive’ funding, will be highlighted and ‘advertised’ as ‘exceedingly’ better performing exemplar than the poor ‘other’ within the state system. The effect of these on people based within the State system on a punitive suspicion can be unfortunate, to say the least.
Recently in a counter affidavit in the Madras High Court, Tamil Nadu explained that forcing them to take up NEP 2020 would be “harsh and disadvantageous to the residents of Tamil Nadu”, a region which already has a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) greater than 50% which was required to be achieved by NEP by 2035. It rightly opposed the policy of vocational education from Class 6 onwards which will marginalize and disenfranchise the poor from the mainstream, formal education, and the formal economy. It also maintained that RTE’s own provision for effective monitoring through Continuous Internal Assessment is more appropriate to younger children rather than external examinations as provided for in the new NEP which will tend to encourage dropouts among Primary school children who may end up failing and being expelled from school.
As another Teachers’ Day approaches, we hope that constituent states who have honored the essence of the Constitution’s intention on the need for equal more constructive education for all will be able to rally other states, agencies, and other stakeholders to act in unison against bad policies that will deepen the marginalization of the already impoverished and unemployed populations.
(The author is an educationist and teachers holding many offices, such as the post of Dean of Education Faculty in Delhi University. Prof. Rampal was also one of the experts who worked with NCERT in formulating the National Curriculum Framework 2005 and who led the primary stage textbook development teams)
Published – September 05, 2024 09:31 am IST
