SCHOOL infrastructure has once again claimed some space in the media. The last time it stayed in the news long enough to matter was in the mid-1980s, when a sensitive education secretary at the Centre put into effect Operation Blackboard. The idea was to enable primary schools to have the minimum requirements for practising active pedagogy.
It was the first time that plastic globes, tablas and children’s literature found a place in the supply list for primary schools. Small scissors and hand-held magnifying lenses were still not regarded as necessary and binoculars were light years away. Much has changed over the last 40 years, but small children are not supposed to learn by doing much with their hands as they used to in the ‘basic’ schools of the post-Independence era. Computers and AI are priorities. The news that European nations have banned them in elementary classes has not filtered down to state-level policymakers.
Radical expansion of the system occurred under the auspices of two flagship programmes: DPEP (District Primary Education Programme) and SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan). DPEP was launched in 1994 in response to an increasing social demand and a global consensus that also brought funds. It was followed by a more carefully planned SSA, which later became a vehicle for the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act.
Both these programmes resulted in a massive growth of enrolment, retention and infrastructure. Dream-like decentralised governance featured cluster, block and district-level institutions — CRCs (cluster resource centres), BRCs (block resource centres), DIETs (district institutes of education and training) — to support pedagogic effort. Today, these structures face acute staff shortage and systemic exhaustion. Recent news reports about Punjab show that DIETs are running with less than half their staff strength. New officials don’t remember what exactly the cluster and block-level resource centres were meant for.
This is nothing unusual. Civil servants come and go, programmes carry on. The newly appointed have little time to read old reports. Once I asked an MEd student to find out how many officers serving the Directorate of Education in New Delhi were familiar with reports written over the previous decade. In her survey, just one elderly officer showed signs of vague familiarity with these reports. The rest said they had no time to read.
Little wonder that no one involved in elementary education remembers the Anil Bordia committee report. It was an attempt to consolidate the gains of SSA.
A seasoned and distinguished bureaucrat, the late Bordia was the architect of Operation Blackboard. He knew that the old directorates were in no mood to own and sustain the innovations of SSA. After all, it was a mission, with project-style funding and implementation, implying expedited procedures to meet deadlines. When its growth began to slow down, the structures created under its auspices had no state guardianship left. The committee headed by Bordia went into minute details in order to present a blueprint for “harmonising” colonial-era directorates with SSA’s mission-mode attainments. It is a brilliant report, but no one reads it now. Schools with locked libraries, outcome-driven testing and teacher shortages are back. Adding to the children’s woes, many teachers are away on SIR (Special Intensive Revision) duty.
From teacher recruitment to construction work and school supplies, SSA created a parallel system. It was exciting to watch its progress, even as one knew that when SSA ended, an uneasy mix of old and new practices would stymie the system. That is precisely what happened. After the passage of the RTE Act, SSA began to slow down and eventually it was merged into the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, which was meant to cover secondary, not just primary, education, with stingier funding for the latter. The growth of private schools and the introduction of English-medium teaching without adequate pedagogic support led to new distortions.
Sporadic reports in recent weeks have drawn public attention to the condition of schools in many parts of the country. Although these reports are patchy, they indicate that children’s education is not in good health. Recruitment of teachers is sluggish, and multiple cadres persist because appointments made under DPEP and SSA have not been regularised. The problem of staff shortage in schools has become chronic, and is further exacerbated by deployment of teachers for “official” duties like SIR. No one in authority worries about the impact a teacher’s absence from school has on children’s learning.
The RTE law was supposed to inaugurate a new chapter in India’s social history. The chapter did open up new, unprecedented vistas — like reservation for the poor in private schools — but older tendencies proved tenacious. Many factors weakened the RTE’s implementation, especially the clauses covering quality. These clauses depended on the quality of training institutions. An overwhelming majority of them are privately owned and the government’s regulatory authority could not control their ways.
The JS Verma Commission’s sharp report on teacher training institutes now spends its peaceful afterlife on the Internet. In any case, the focus has shifted to maintenance of showpieces and shiny islands. The system has acquiesced to the wider culture of competition that merges into coaching for coveted courses. This ecology cares little for the vast majority. Historically, this is not new, but it is a disappointing reversal to the pre-RTE cultural ethos.
Globally, too, it shows that our trajectory has little to do with viksit countries. Even in an absolutely basic matter like the importance of maintaining a regular teaching routine, we prefer the event-management model. Frequent holidays and official duties don’t allow teachers to focus on teaching. School closures are common. The BRICS dignitaries won’t know that Delhi schools were closed during their visit.