ABSTRACT
Rapid strides taken in the area of school education in India since the 1990s have led to a signifi cant rise in overall literacy, school enrolment, infrastructure, and the political priority to universalise elementary education. Yet, dramatic regional and gender disparities in education are closing very slowly. Though elementary school enrolment rates increased considerably and the rate of out-of-school children has declined to a mere 4 per cent (ASER 2010), the dropout rate is reported to be as high as 49 per cent and is likely to increase as a result of the global fi nancial crisis (Prabhu 2009). Huge investments in building new schools closer to homes have had little impact on the teachinglearning environment and learner-achievement. In many schools, the school curriculum is often ideologically contested; the burden of non-comprehension continues to be inhuman and teachers across the country continue to be disempowered with the increasing informalisation of their employment.1 This spreading malaise has led to major gaps in the quality of state schools, leading to the mushrooming of unregulated private schools across the country (De et al. 2003, 2005; Srivastava 2007; Streuli et al. 2011), caused by state policy failure to fi ll the immense quality gap in school education.2 The National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) data indicates that about 80 per cent of elementary school enrolment continues to be in state-funded schools, only a small proportion of which are privately managed (2010). Yet, over 16 per cent of rural children go to private schools (ASER 2006: 14). This trend is reported to be growing (Desai et al. 2009). In comparison, ‘even now, in most OECD countries, only about 10 per cent of students attend private primary schools’ ( Jha 2005: 3683). Hence, in spite of the massive public investment by the
Government of India into Universalisation of Elementary Education (UEE) and two years into the Free and Compulsory Education (Right to Education [RTE]) Act (GoI 2009a), the sharp decline in the share of public school enrolment is a serious public policy question which underlies the need to respond to a rapidly changing educational context. Much water has fl owed under the bridge since Myron Weiner’s (1991) scathing criticism of India’s educational performance and policy in the early 1990s. The two key constraints identifi ed by Weiner were: the lack of faith of educators and offi cials in education as an equaliser, or an instrument for developing shared attitudes and social characteristics; and the reported low regard that teachers have for teaching and their lack of faith in the ability of students to think independently.3 While much of Weiner’s pessimism about India’s educational performance has been overtaken by facts,4 these two constraints still remain as critical challenges to the structural reform of the state-led educational revolution in India. Within this, the most serious unaddressed issue is the critical role of the teacher.
