Although only the intellectually honest — and this excludes the vast majority of the country’s Left intellectuals who dominate the academy — will admit it, Indian education is steadily and inexorably being privatised. While post-independence India’s fast-expanding middle class seceded from the public/government school education system several decades ago, of late even aspirational lower middle class and bottom-of-the-pyramid households are voting with their feet — and thin wallets — for the country’s unwarrantedly maligned private education system. In his well-researched and under-appreciated book A Beautiful Tree (2009), Dr. James Tooley, professor of education at Newcastle-upon-Tyne University, UK, exposed the curious phenomenon of India’s ubiquitous ‘unrecognised’ private budget schools — low-cost primaries established in low-rent and slum habitations — run by education entrepreneurs levying monthly tuition fees of Rs.100-500. Through numerous interviews with less-than-well-to-do parents and promoter-principals of private budget schools, Tooley proves (and official statistics of several state governments including Maharashtra and Karnataka among others confirm) that there’s a swelling exodus of children from all but the poorest households fleeing dysfunctional government schools defined by decrepit infrastructure, chronic teacher absenteeism, anti-English language prejudice and abysmal learning outcomes, for private budget schools run by dedicated education entrepreneurs mindful of reputation. According to Dr. Parth Shah, founder president of the Delhi-based Centre for Civil Society, the country’s top-ranked think tank, the number of unrecognised private budget schools countrywide is more than 400,000, equal almost to one-third of the country’s 1.40 million recognised primary-secondaries. “More than 100 million of the 230 million school-going children in India are enrolled in private schools, with nearly 40 percent of all students attending less than 10 percent of the total number of schools countrywide, the vast majority of them private. This is confirmed by the Annual Status of Education Report 2012 published by the well-known education NGO Pratham. It shows that the enrollment of children in the 6-14 age group in rural India has risen from 18.7 percent in 2006 to 28.3 percent in 2012, with private school enrollment growing at over 10 percent year-on-year. Real and perceived advantages of private schooling are impacting parents across the country, prompting them to opt for private education for their children. Unfortunately there is little acknowledgement of this reality in the Central or state governments. Indeed, instead of acknowledging the role of private and budget schools and evolving policies to encourage them to improve learning outcomes, governments are stubbornly holding on to outdated policies and mindsets,” comments Anand Sudarshan, hitherto vice chairman and managing director of Manipal Global Education, and currently founder-director of the Bangalore-based Sylvant Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a strategic education advisory firm. Quite clearly unmindful of official peeves and ideological prejudices, across the demographic spectrum parents and students are opting for superior K-12 and post-secondary private education. And to their credit, despite government and judicial discouragement, driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest blended with altruism, a growing number of education entrepreneurs are promoting internationally benchmarked capital-intensive schools and higher education institutions across the country. In our 14th…
