The Educational Divide
The education system in India is marred by gross inequalities in terms of access, completion and quality. Class, linguistic background, gender, ethnicity and place of birth all have impacted the education system. These, in turn, contribute to inequality in acquisition of knowledge, accompanied by massive poverty, discrimination and regional disparities. There are more than one unequal ‘Indias’ that live within the one Indian polity and society. Marginalized sections are denied access to quality education, due to rapid decline in public institutions and increasing privatization-from the primary to higher- suppressing their social and economic mobility.
As per the Annual Status of Education Report(ASER) of the NGO Pratham, 2018, the richest 5% urban India spend 29 times more on education than the middle income group households of rural India, with top 5% of urban Indians spending Rs.908 per month on education as against megre Rs.7.5 by the bottom 5% of the people in countryside. This enormous inequality in access to quality education, results in inequality of opportunities. While the children of the top 10% are able to get good jobs and compete with the best in the world, the vast majority of poor kids eke out a precarious living in the informal sector. And, given India’s size, 10% adds up to big number, bigger than population of many small countries. The rest of the Indians are left behind, condemned to do all sorts of odd jobs - backbreaking work in sweatshops and construction sites,-and make the army of maids and watchmen and sweepers and domestic servants to keep the rich comfort.
The educational divide in India - a serious problem-is three-fold:
1. Reduction of State Expenditure on Education: The New Education Policy (NEP) is more about rhetoric than the real reform in education. Its proposal to have foundational literacy for the children in the age group of 3-8 years is misconceived. The NEP seeks to involve “peer-tutoring" volunteers to reach out to children who are not in schools for a variety of reasons. This goes against the Right to Education, which mandates the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to 14 years. The entry of private players means reduction in the state spending on education. This will result in unqualified persons and non state players getting involved in the foundational literacy programme, particularly at the village level, seriously compromising with the quality of instruction, dispensing with the requirement of qualified trained teachers that the government is expected to employee. The private schools which used to cater to the needs of the better off will now target the poor and squeeze their megre earnings. And private schools rather than supporting the public education system will gradually replace it.
Education is not a priority for the government. Instead of spending more on education, the allocation to education in the Union budget for 2021-22 is actually slashed by 6%, compared to last year, even as the Centre announced development of 15,000 ‘Adarsh Vidyalayas’. While the Department of School Education has been allocated Rs.54, 873 crore, down from Rs.59, 845 crore in the previous budget, the allocation for the Department of Higher Education has gone down to Rs.38, 350 crore from Rs.39, 466 crore. This is when all the experts on education demanding allocation of at least 10% of the GDP, considering the scale and magnitude of education in India. It is strange, the budget makes no reference to the lockdown and the multiple challenges it has thrown up for the poor. The poor parents who depend on the lowest rung of free government schools are the ones who need maximum state support as they suffer the most by reduction of state expenditure on education. The pandemic has worsened their misery. As Professor Shekhar Pathak of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, says, “With poor parents being economically constrained with means of livelihood being snatched away from, with neither cultural capital to support their children’s online learning, nor money to buy gadgets, nor food to replace mid-day meals given in schools, nor provision of a stable, secure, stress-free environment to grow up in, more financial resources are required.” The government is insensitive and indifferent to their plight.
2. Rural-Urban and Gender Divide: According to the ASER, 5.5% rural children are not enrolled in schools in 2020. The difference is the sharpest among the youngest children (6-10 years) where 5.3% rural children have not enrolled in schools in 2020, compared to just 1.8% in 2018. The Covid-19 adversely affected the education the world over. However, India should be more worried about its fall out on education, especially on education of the girl child. Around 300 million children are reported to be out of schools in India due to the pandemic. The poor children are deprived of midday meals, which have been an incentive to make them attend schools, resulting in increase in dropout of children from schools. The boys and girls in country side are now more involved in assisting their parents in manual work and doing house hold chores and are unlikely to return to formal schooling.
The unholy trinity of patriarchy, poverty and pandemic has led to a surge in child marriage. There has been a clear link between keeping girls in schools and delaying their marriage. That link is now broken. Some 166,000 girls and boys in Delhi government and municipal schools have dropped out as a result of education moving online. And online education means an end to girls education in rural areas, with in-class learning shuttered, girls are forced to drop out from schools.
3. Digital Divide: The indiscriminate privatisation of education at all levels, has already divided the schools and college going children into haves and have-nots, making good quality education more a privilege of the rich and the affluent. Now the digital divide has sharpened the divide between the poor and rich and the rural-urban children. Online education is no real education; it killed the formal education system. Online education, during the pandemic, may be alright in countries technologically advanced, with all the children having access to computers, internet and smart phones, but in a poor country like India, online education has deepened the rural and urban and the poor and-rich digital divide like never before. As per the ASER 2020, only one in ten households in India has a computer- desktop, laptop or tablet- with most of the internet enabled homes being located in cities, which have 42% internet access; while in rural India, just 15% are connected to the internet, demonstrating the extent of learning loss that the students in rural India suffered. The latest UNICEF data reveals, only one in four children has access to digital devices and internet connectivity in India, and there is a large rural-urban and gender divide. Then what is this hullabaloo about the online education?
Teaching is nurturing. In India some 380
million students study in 1000 plus universities and more than 50,000 colleges.
The essence of teaching lies not in the transmission of knowledge alone, but in
the ability to help students to develop their full potential, to encourage them
to think critically, ask questions, driven by the urge to know more. This is possible only when there is
interaction between students and teachers, and students with students, in and
out of the classrooms. Digital learning cannot substitute books and teachers.
The virtual learning has become an impediment to the effective teaching and
learning process. And lack of internet connectivity, smart phones, financial
resources and home environment conducive to e-learning are a major problem. Besides, learning from home is affecting
emotional quotient of children, resulting in stress, depression and anxiety. Professor
Reeta Sonawat,,SNDT University, thinks "the
adolescent years are the age of heightened emotionality and if a year or two of college life
is lost in the pandemic, they will lose crucial years of development.” In Mumbai University,over three lakh students are enrolled for various programmes last year, sitting at home, worried about their future.
And simply imparting some online education, without addressing the issue of educational divide, just to keep a section of students engaged somehow, while a vast majority of students denied access to it, is self defeating. The State must not abdicate its responsibility of funding education and investing in educational infrastructure to make quality education affordable and accessible to children of all age groups.
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