Contrary to public opinion the number of budget private schools — an entrepreneurial response to 1.20 million state government schools defined by rock-bottom learning outcomes — is not small. 400,000 BPS countrywide have a staggering enrolment of 60 million children. In the hearts and minds of the editors of EducationWorld, promoted 22 years ago on the eve of the new millennium with the mission statement to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda,” i.e, to accord top priority to human capital development, India’s unique Budget Private Schools (BPS) have a special place. Contrary to myths manufactured by communists and leftists who dominate the academy and media, the number of BPS — an entrepreneurial response to the country’s 1.20 million state government schools defined by crumbling buildings, multi-grade classrooms, chronic teacher truancy, lack of toilets, English (Inglish) language aversion and rock-bottom learning outcomes — is not small. According to the Centre for Civil Society, a Delhi-based think tank, an estimated 400,000 BPS levying tuition fees ranging between Rs.6,000-50,000 per year are operational countrywide, and have a staggering enrolment of 60 million children, a number almost equivalent to entire populations of Britain and France. BPS provide an alternative mainly primary and often secondary, schooling option to aspirational lower middle and working class households desperate to provide their children acceptably good English-medium education, a pre-condition of socio-economic upward mobility in the low-opportunities society shaped by post-independence India’s neta-babu brotherhood that accords low priority to mass education and human capital development. For instance, despite several high-powered commissions and committees starting with the Kothari Commission (1967) recommending that annual government (Centre plus states) expenditure on public education should aggregate at least 6 percent of GDP, it has averaged 3-3.5 percent for 74 years. The outcome of this (some say calculated) neglect is that 21st century India hosts an estimated 300 million adult illiterates, and over 50 percent of class V children in the majority of 1.2 million government schools cannot read and/or comprehend class II textbooks and solve simple math sums. It’s against this backdrop that one should assess the contribution of Budget Private Schools to Indian education. They offer low-priced primary-secondary English-medium education to millions of children from low-income households, providing them a chance to break the illiteracy-poverty cycle to which bottom-of-pyramid citizens are sentenced by the establishment and left liberals who dominate the academy. The establishment loves to hate Budget Private Schools . According to them, Budget Private Schools exploit the gullible poor by promising superior English-medium education which they seldom deliver. Therefore, s.19 of the milestone Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, mandates that BPS which don’t fulfil several infrastructure norms should be levied heavy fines, failing which they should be forced to close. However, government schools are exempt from fulfilling s.19 norms. Moreover, during the forced government mandated 16-18 months’ lockdown of all education institutions countrywide because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Central and state governments declined…
