Missing the school bus

While discussing the widening gap in the opportunity to access basic education between children from the rich and upper middle classes and t...

While discussing the widening gap in the opportunity to access basic education between children from the rich and upper middle classes and those from the lower classes, a leading academic recently argued: 8216;8216;we lost the opportunity of having a common school system as a solution to arrest the inequality in the 1960s and in the 1970s, and now it is too late!8217;8217; It sounded to me as if someone was saying in the 1930s and 1940s that we lost the first war of independence in 1857 and now it was too late!

The introduction of a new Article 21A in the Constitution provides a renewed opportunity to reduce the increasing inequality in education at the elementary level and achieve the goals of justice 8212; social, economic and political 8212; as pledged in the preamble. The import of this new fundamental right is yet to sink in the minds of policymakers and academics, or appear on the agenda of genuine social and political activists. One, it is a new right yet to be demanded and enforced by the state. Two, while the original fundamental rights affect most of us on a day-to-day basis and they have become integral to our milieu, the right to 8216;8216;free and compulsory education8217;8217; does not affect us, as all those who matter can afford to pay for private education for their children. Hence the fundamental right to free education of children of ages 6-14 as given by Article 21A since December 2002 is yet to acquire the stature of other fundamental rights.

No wonder those who drafted the recent report of the CABE Central Advisory Board of Education committee on the free and compulsory education bill argued: 8216;8216;Right to education, which Article 21A seeks to confer, is different from other fundamental rights 8230; while the earlier fundamental rights had no or insignificant financial implications for the state, the Right to Education has major financial implications8230;8217;8217; The public study group or the PSG, a voluntary group of academics in Delhi to provide research inputs to the CABE committees, in their rejoinder circulated in the CABE meeting on July 14-15, challenged the premises of the report. It is argued that such artificial classification and hierarchy in fundamental rights is the product of the gaps in the class characteristics of those who control education and those who are being deprived of the equal opportunity.

Also, who can deny that the state is not spending huge amounts on police and higher judiciary to protect citizens8217; right to life and liberty, and equality before law? Therefore, the argument of 8216;8216;financial implications8217;8217; and treating this right as lower in status to other rights is flawed.

It is the case of the writer that no schools, including private schools, can charge fees from children in the 6-14 age group after introduction of Article 21A. And that any law being enacted as a follow-up of this amendment has to factor in this constitutional requirement.

There is, of course, a caveat. If a private school wants to operate outside the recognition, affiliation and certification framework of the state it could afford to go beyond the constitutional injunction of the right to free education. In other words, if a school, private included, is functioning as the 8216;8216;instrumentality8217;8217; of the state, it can8217;t charge fees from the 6-14 age group as that would be violating Article 21A. In India, the very concept of a school being purely private is a myth, for they enjoy so many subsidies in terms of tax benefits and engagement of state trained teachers and state sponsored curricula. This aspect of private schools and therefore their social obligations was highlighted by the Law Commission in 1998 when they argued that private schools must admit 50 per cent children from the neighbourhood without charging any fees. Against this, the present draft bill proposes 25 per cent seats to the 8216;8216;weaker sections8217;8217;, which seems more a charity than the recognition of equal rights.

Very few people in the country realise the magnitude of the problem of increasing number of private schools breeding inequality and teaching skewed values in non-inclusive settings on the one hand, and many operating as low quality teaching shops on the other. How can a law ignore this reality?

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Article 21A gives an opportunity to policymakers and social and political activists to reflect upon the strength of our indigenous common schools system that our national education policy commits us to, and the principles and objectives of inclusive education being argued at international fora. It is time to get out of the mindset that we missed an opportunity in the 1960s and the 1970s and so we should miss it again, in times when we are striving to be counted in the developed democracies of the world.

The writer is a civil servant, researching inclusive education, at Oxford. Views are personal