The amendment of the Right to Education Act and the scrapping of the no-detention policy has brought the Right to Education Act back into news.
A Times of India editorial starts with: “With Parliament passing the Right to Education (RTE) Amendment Bill that scraps the controversial non-detention policy, the mistakes of the RTE Act must not be repeated. Its heavy emphasis on inputs like physical infrastructure in schools rather than on qualitative outcomes like learning levels and teaching standards was misplaced.”
The narrative that is promoted focuses on three points:
- The RTE Act focuses heavily on input norms instead of learning.
- The no-detention policy is to blame for lowering learning levels.
- Getting rid of input norms will foster learning.
Each of these claims is logically flawed, absurd, and empirically refuted.
The RTE Act focuses heavily on input norms instead of learning.
The RTE Act mandates minimum infrastructure norms. These include very basic things like toilets for girls, ramps for children with disabilities, and drinking water. None of these are “heavy demands”. Having these things should be common sense in the 21st century.
Yet, in institutions like NITI Aayog, such common sense does not prevail. Similarly, prominent economists joined NITI Aayog’s line of argument: Get rid of any input norms to allow schools to focus on learning.
This is nonsense.
Nobody prevents anyone from focusing on learning. Having toilets for girls does not impede learning. The opposite is true.
It is not true that all governments focused on input norms and that is why learning was neglected. First, these are two distinct things handled by different parts of the administration. Second, there was no focus on inputs. Less than 10% of schools fulfil the minimum norm. Governments were not neglecting learning because they focused on input norms.
They neglected both.
This is the reality after a decade of “heavy emphasis on inputs like physical infrastructure in schools rather than on qualitative outcomes like learning levels and teaching standards”, to quote the TOI editorial again:
The No-Detention Policy Is To Blame For Lowering Learning Levels
A study by IIM Ahmedabad debunks this myth. The narrative suggests that as there were no exams, children did not care and stopped learning as they were automatically promoted. We talk about primary school children here. This is absurd. The reason for low learning levels are a neglect and under-investment in public education. Without textbooks, learning becomes difficult. With 2,80,000 teachers missing in Bihar alone, learning becomes difficult. With high vacancies in the administration and DIETs, learning becomes difficult. With unqualified and untrained teachers, learning becomes difficult. With distance courses instead of practical and pedagogy oriented training for teachers, learning becomes difficult.
Blaming the no-detention policy is an easy excuse that does not hold when one looks into empirical findings and logic. Learning levels are much too low. But the reason was not the no-detention policy. Doing away with it can therefore also not solve the learning crisis. It will only worsen another crisis: rising dropouts. And it will be abused by private school operators who want to get rid of children admitted under the quota.
Getting Rid Of Input Norms Will Foster Learning
No, it won’t. Why should it? A question to ask the Times of India Editorial and NITI Aayog.
For An Honest Debate
So why is this narrative repeated again and again even though it can be easily debunked by empirical findings and logic? There are special interest groups who want to open privately operated schools which do not fulfil any infrastructure requirements. They dream of a wild-west of ‘educational entrepreneurs’, that is people who want to make money by providing inferior education to poor people’s children. Of course, their own children go to private schools that over-fulfil the RTE norms multiple times. They would start protesting if their daughters lacked working toilets at schools. But it seems that the same people from the Times of India and NITI Aayog measure differently when it comes to the children of the poor.
This will not solve India’s learning crisis. It will only deepen it. Newspapers and journalists would do well to think for themselves instead of repeating illogical and wrong narratives by special interest groups.