Primary education is the foundation of life of all individuals and most important in the life of a nation.
Developed countries in the world have invested a fair portion of their GDP in early education that resulted in their overall development of quality of life and growth.
The ten most educated nations, Russia, Canada, Japan, Finland, the USA, South Korea, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Israel spend nearly 10 per cent of their GDP on education. The economic success of many socialist countries with highest literacy and quality educational standards lies with their initial focus investment on universal primary education.
The countries neglecting primary education still continue to be poor and backward such as sub Saharan Africa, Somalia and Ethiopia. Education as an important means of change and progress and it needs substantial attention of any modern democratic Government in terms of budgetary allocation, policy and institutional mechanism.
It is worldwide experienced that primary education has been the responsibility of Government and privatisation of such an important sector will have serious ramifications over our social, political and economic life, progress and nation building.
The current trend in a backward State such as Odisha witnesses a serious deterioration in quality of primary education as consistently reported many times in number of survey reports and results of schools.
A large number of schools are run by the State Government and a vast section of rural population depends on it. Urban elites and upper class do not bother about the results because their children are safe in private schools.
Now the trend is even poorest of the poor prefer a private English medium school as they see a hope in it for their children. This ongoing process encourages privatisation of primary education and minimises the role of State in ensuring universalisation of quality primary education. Why such move to privatize primary educationIJ How it is going to impact over our social life and the education sector as well as employment in education sector which is one of the biggest formal sources of secure employment.
In spite of the Constitutional mandate of Article 21A and popular political will both the Centre and the State Government have neglected primary education without resource allocation and in implementing key policy decisions of various educational commission’s recommendations made in different times. The poor States in India such as Odisha are having vast majority of marginalised population where investment in primary education has been abysmally low and the major part of the budget goes to salary and administration, devoid of a fair share of spending to improve the quality of teaching by teachers and learning of students.
The School and Mass Education Department of the State lacks vision and leadership to lead and manage primary education sector considering the need of the State, rather than mechanically follow bureaucratic procedures without innovation and standards and creative applications to improve the quality and in maintaining uniformity.
There has been no uniformity even within the department with varieties of teaching and non-teaching staff having large difference in salary and service conditions which always encourages teachers to go for protest against Government at the cost of teaching and overall concern for the sector. The teachers’ associations very seldom raise the issues of teaching and learning issues in schools and for overall development of the quality of primary education of the state.
There are verities of primary schools in the State run by the Government, semi-Government corporates, NGOs, religious bodies, community and private trusts which lack uniformity in quality of teaching and availability basic infrastructure, teaching and non-teaching staff and proper management in student – parent- teacher relation. Many of such institutions lack vision and purpose while mechanically following others with unhealthy competition to earn money.
Some of them use the educational institutions to spread religious beliefs and faith among children at tender age. The basic purpose of education is missing. The State Government has been promoting privatisation of primary education by providing land at free of cost, other infrastructural facilities, grants and various form of benefits to private trusts, NGOs and non-profit making companies run by mostly family members and individuals. Even the Government has promoted educational support schemes in the name of helping the poor and underprivileged to really help the private institutions running educational business by misusing the RTE Act.
Virtually, the State Government has no control over monopoly of private institution with active patronage of politicians, industrialists and senior bureaucrats; rather the very policy of the Government is to facilitate privatisation.
The degradation in quality of education in Government schools have many reasons but this can be easily improved with active political will and investment.
In this context, the recent work done by AAP Government in Delhi to improve the quality of education in Government schools with investment on basic infrastructure and teachers’ capacity building has set a good example for the whole country.
The first step is to make available school building, class room, electricity, drinking water, toilet, kitchen, staff room and playground but unfortunately, the State of Odisha has not yet built such facilities in all villages especially in rural parts and tribal areas. It is a fact that many of our villages have no school building and the children are still reading in unsafe condition and these kinds of schools are also seasonally closed due to weather condition mostly in summer and rainy days. While tribal areas have no schools, the Government has been promoting private institutions with huge grants to run schools for tribal children.
Even these schools are carrying huge numbers of children without proper monitoring by Government. In spite of building schools in every village why large size schools are being promoted by Government without any restrictionIJ This type of discrimination in distribution of opportunities to children is not going be helpful universalisation of primary education.
All our schools irrespective of their ownership of management must have uniformity in availability of basic infrastructure out of State fund and the basic norms must be maintained everywhere. The schools run by the Government for the marginalised sections reel under inadequate basic amenities for the children in school but there has been no improvement over the situation in spite of repeated protest by parents and students themselves.
Not only students but also the teachers and non-teaching staff in these schools are less paid and suffer all kind of injustice and exploitation by the department officials. The second most important issue is quality of teaching where the Government needs to ensure proper student and teacher ratio with good investment to improve the teaching capacity of the teachers through training and mythological research.
The teachers training institutions in the State must have good academic environment, along with exposure, research and training by involving experts, education loving academics and social workers and policy makers. The third most issue is medium of instruction. It has been already followed in many States that the medium of instruction must be English along with mother tongue as compulsory subject. The Government of Telengana and many other States have already adopted such model in primary schools. This will reduce the rush to private English medium schools and bring more uniformity in our primary education system of the State. It will promote world view and pave the way for inclusiveness.
Though the State Government has already been promoting English medium in selective schools and supporting private English medium schools but it must be universal to include all children of the State irrespective of their social and economic status.
(manasbbsr15@gmail.com)