Budget Expectations: Need for focus on government schools, essential for India’s future

Several reports and studies in recent times, including the latest Annual Education Report (ASER 2022), have drawn attention to the fact that post-Covid, while enrollment in schools has improved significantly, basic literacy levels have been markedly impacted and showed decline.

The total percentage of children attending government schools in the country is around 51 percent (UDISE), but the number of children attending government schools in rural areas is more than 80 percent. While previous studies have shown that issues of learning loss and below-grade appropriate learning predate the pandemic, the digital divide is exacerbated as children move out of brick-and-mortar schools and classes go online Is.

This is more pronounced in government schools and budget private schools where a large proportion of the population comes from low-income families. According to a study by the Center for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), the learning loss for students from low-income families in India could range from 50 percent to 80 percent during the pandemic.

Learning impairments are not a new phenomenon and there is ample data to confirm that children in the higher grades may not be able to read and solve math problems at the very least. What the pandemic has done is brought this issue into focus and once again an opportunity to reset the gap and address it. This is not an opportunity to be missed and government schools need to focus on providing targeted support and interventions to students who have been most affected by the pandemic, especially students from low-income families and marginalized communities. To do this, the government should provide all necessary resources and support for remedial classes, to help students catch up on lost learning, and by providing professional development for teachers in their ability to teach foundational literacy and numeracy skills should be strengthened.

The need of the hour is for the government to focus on providing universal access to quality education by addressing the issues of inadequate infrastructure, shortage of trained teachers and inadequate educational resources. There is a need to invest in the education sector because we have something we didn’t expect: a second chance. Implementing policies and programs that promote inclusive education and ensure that children from marginalized communities have access to the same opportunities as their non-marginalized peers will have an element of equality.

The education outlay for the Union Budget for 2023 needs to prioritize creation of infrastructure in terms of buildings, laboratories, equipment, digital devices, teaching and learning aids and uninterrupted supply of electricity and internet. It’s a great wish list but may not actually be possible. The creation of the outlay should leverage resources through cleverly designed partnerships by providing seed money through the budget and attracting investments from the private sector to support the upgradation of government school infrastructure and manpower.

Intermittent availability of electricity in schools is a real problem and is more severe in rural areas due to either unavailable or non-commissioned infrastructure. The annual report of the Ministry of Power for 2021 states that the country has transformed from a power deficit country to a power surplus country. Due to more efficient generation, the availability of electricity has increased from around 12:30 hours in 2015 to 21:09 hours in rural areas and 23:41 hours in urban areas. This is definitely good news for electrification of schools. But despite this, there is still intermittent supply in remote parts of the country. We live in a country where there is ample sunlight for most parts of the year. Providing funds for solarisation of schools, especially in rural and remote areas, would greatly improve access. This will enable greater reach of education-focused TV channels (Swayam Prabha TV through Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG) itself), especially in smaller states with critical road networks and digital connectivity issues.

Digital infrastructure can be an efficiency multiplier in creating smart classrooms and providing tools for teachers to use their time smartly. Even if the Internet is not available, digital blackboards, tablets and pre-loaded apps can allow the creation of smart classrooms and take the hard work out of tasks such as assessment, attendance and lesson planning. With so much emphasis and chatter around edtech, the true enabler and platform is through building multi-modal methods of disseminating and gathering information. If net is available then use whatsapp. If this does not happen, the telephone is always there to establish a two-way flow of information. Such infrastructure is needed to support contextually appropriate digital teaching and learning content and digital training modules. This brings us back to our previous point of continuous power supply as a key aspect of infrastructure support and solarisation is certainly an option.

The National Education Policy 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2022 have laid great emphasis on early years and foundational education. The core of basic education is foundational literacy and numeracy. To achieve the target set by NEP 2020 for universal achievement of FLN skills by 2025, continuity of learning in early education and foundational years must be strengthened. It is common knowledge that early years education is important for the overall well-being of a child. Between the ages of 3-5 (pre-primary) and 6-11 (primary) the foundation for lifelong development is laid. Children who fall behind in these early years often never catch up with their peers. NEP 2020 envisages strengthening of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). This is to be implemented through Bal Vatikas and Anganwadi workers. While in some states Bal Vatikas have been co-established with regular government schools, in others the infrastructure is yet to be created. Co-location of Bal Vatikas and training of Anganwadi workers are important for elementary education. Anganwadi workers are more familiar with antenatal and postnatal care and do not possess the necessary skills to implement early education in the very critical years. Funds are absolutely necessary for the upgradation/creation and co-establishment of Bal Vatikas in the same way as the training of Anganwadi workers to support elementary education. For the success of Nipun Bharat Mission, it is necessary to focus on the training of FLN grade teachers of primary classes.

This brings us to teachers. Teachers are an important factor in the learning process. Today, increasingly, less and less agency is vested in teachers. They are not part of the main counseling processes. The syllabus and curriculum are pre-decided at the departmental level and teachers are assigned the task of teaching the material provided. Sometimes, they do not have the flexibility to create their own lesson plans. Robbing teachers of agency leads to apathy and fatigue, and the job of teaching becomes mechanical. To get the demographic dividend we keep talking about, we need children to reach a certain competency in learning. To do this, we need willing teachers. Teachers who want to teach and not those who want to teach. To ensure engagement of teachers, it is imperative to provide adequate resource outlay for targeted training along with an annual training plan. Teacher capacity building is key. Shortage of teachers/proxy teachers is a real issue, especially in rural and remote areas. Incentivizing teachers to work in under-served areas, investing in well-structured teacher training and professional development, creating virtual common rooms to ensure peer-to-peer support are key.

Teachers need to constantly talk and engage with each other to manage children at different levels of learning. They play a vital role in the rollout and achievement of all learning milestones. As a starting point, teacher communities of practice need to be built. With a large number of teachers becoming familiar with digital platforms, virtual common rooms for peer-to-peer interactions can strengthen teacher communities and create much-needed peer support groups. With so much emphasis on socio-emotional support, teachers need to be endowed with the wherewithal and emotional strength to handle their wards effectively and with sensitivity. These platforms can also capture and disseminate local and frugal innovations. Otherwise, these innovations remain specific to the school where an enterprising teacher came up with them. The funding to set up a statewide portal to enable these communities of practice is a one-time effort and does not cost much.

While enrolment, attendance and transition have improved significantly, substantial funds are required for creation of digital infrastructure for school students’ database integration with Citizen Registration System (CRS) and e-Mamta database. This will ensure accurate identification of all eligible children for universal enrollment by generating a unique ID for each child. This unique ID for each child will enable systematic tracking of students in case of migration and dropout.

The underlying good news is that according to recent reports children in rural areas are migrating from private schools to government schools. As confidence in the public-school education system continues to grow, this is a huge opportunity for the government to invest, advance its vision and plans for one of the world’s largest schooling systems, which affects.

(Rathna Viswanathan, CEO, Reach to Teach)