Ensuring Better Outcomes from Government Schools

There were more than 500 comments on Times of India webpage that described Allahabad High Court's verdict that forces government officials to send their children to government schools. Almost all comments welcomed this landmark judgement. And why not, this seems to be a quick way of improving the quality of education in government schools. This is an easy solution and most likely to result in exactly opposite outcome.

The decision is primarily meant to ensure that children, who are not able to afford private education and are studying in government schools, should get better education. I admire the intention, but I seriously question the verdict for its impact.

Let me back my opinion by some facts and clarifications. First, there is an inherent assumption that all the government schools are bad. We know that this is not true. Navodaya Schools, Sainik Schools and several other government run schools are imparting high quality education and these schools are primarily catering to poor, common middle-class households. The moment this verdict will be enforced, there would be a rush among the government officials to get their kids admitted in these schools. There will be less number of  seats available for the rural, middle-class students, as government officials will migrate their kids from the private schools to these better run government schools. So the expectation that the government officials kids studying in government schools will improve the quality of education is not going to be met. The government officials are not going to send their kids to the remote, rural schools which require the attention and quality enhancement measures.

Furthermore, it is a common fact that the most of the government officials are concentrated in district headquarters or urban/peri-urban areas. So this is not going to have much impact on the rural schools anyway.

I feel that instead of this poorly thought decision, High Court could have insisted on creating a mechanism that gives incentives (positive or negative) the teachers and education department officials on the basis of learning outcomes. A third party randomized assessment of learning outcomes of kids and teaching efforts put by the teachers can be the basis.

Changing Lives

I tried my best to balance myself on the bricks that were strategically placed in the annoying puddle of sewage that was coming out from the nearby households. The bricks were there to help us cross the puddle without getting our feet dirty.  Every morning I had to cross the puddle, whose size grew randomly, in order to go to my school. There were not many student keen on doing this, they had several excuses to not go to the school. And, not many people were bothered. School for many parents was the place to park their kids when the kids were being a nuisance at home and/or they were not old enough to contribute in the agriculture or household work. My family and I both were exceptional. My family sent me school for studying and I never tried to find excuses, like many other kids, to not go to school.
Our village was fortunate  to have a primary school as there were no schools in the surrounding five-six villages. Students from those villages walked, with a home-made bag and a old grain/fertiliser sack, 4-5 kms every day to attend our village school. The sack was filling in for lack of desk and bench.
Our school three teachers, two rooms and zero toilets. But we never needed a ‘toilet’, there were many options. But anyway, for us learning was always dependent on teachers and not on the infrastructure.
Our teachers used the school time to pursue their many hobbies (such as reading Gulshan Nanda and Kushwaha Kant novels) and occupations (scouting for good buffalos for their business) but still they found sometime to teach us. All the five classes were held together, as there was only one room that was functional. It was not a big issue as there were no syllabus or routine to be followed.
Surprisingly, amidst all of this we learnt a few things. Of course, not all the students benefitted equally. But some really did well. I am one of those. I look back and find that most of my classmates never studied beyond class ten. A lack of resources, family pressure and lack of understanding of impact of education frittered away all the possibilities of developing the future potential.
Today, in hindsight I understand that a better education system, better teachers and a better pedagogy would be have done wonders to many human lives. And, there can never be a more noble profession than being a teacher. I would surely like to be a teacher. 

The sorry state of education in Bihar

An examination centre in Bihar (image source :BBC)

Mass cheating in secondary school examination in Bihar may surprise some people but for those who are from Bihar or lived in Bihar it is a routine affair. Post 1991-92 there were some improvements and mass copying reduced for a while but cheating in examination never stopped. Cheating, mass copying, question paper leaks these are very common. In fact, these have got acceptance very much like dowry practice in these areas. Most people do not see anything wrong in it.

Mass copying and cheating are in most cases happen with full cognizance of the invigilators, teachers and other officials involved in the process. During the 10th and 10th examinations in Bihar, parents are more stressed than students. They try their best to get more marks for their kids. Sometime by helping them in copying, sometime by bribing the answer sheet evaluators, and sometime by getting the question papers leaked.

This seriously ruins the reputation of many hardworking and honest Bihari students who work as hard as any other student to do well in examinations. In fact, due to mass copying and cheating going in examination, most of the evaluators assume that every one has copied and evaluate the answer sheets with this assumption. In such cases, students get less marks than what their written responses deserve. So an honest student always suffers. An honest student is considered a fool by other students and often ridiculed.

These malpractices have ensured that those who can enroll their students in CBSE and ICSE (Bihar School Examination Board conducted examinations are usually suffer more from this practice) affiliated schools do not enroll their student in Bihar School Examination Board affiliated schools. Unfortunately, CBSE and ICSE affiliated schools are mainly in district headquarters or bigger towns. So there are not many options available for good students coming out from rural areas. The result is they get poor marks in 10th and 12th examinations. A quick comparison of the percentile and percentage marks obtained by the students appearing in these three different examination systems (ICSE, CBSE and BSEB) will reveal that the top 1 percentile of BSEB students hardly score more than 80% (despite all the copying and cheating!!) of marks, while top 1 percentile of ICSE and CBSE get more than 95-98% in these examinations.

I would like to remind that these practices are in no way any indication of diligence and intelligence of these students. Most of the students who either go out for higher education or compete in other competitive examinations (where malpractices in examinations are not possible) perform at par with other state students or often outperform them.

Personally, I believe that as a society we are not devaluing honesty and integrity day by day. In some places it is more conspicuous in some it is concealed. The key factors are not absolute belief in these values but social acceptability. If something is dishonest, unethical but socially acceptable we do not see any harm in doing it.