Student Minimal Schooling in India

While it is true that government has taken many initiatives to foster primary education to the children of India in the form of flagship programmes such as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA), Mid Day Meal and the National Policy on Education (NPE) which calls for fulfilling compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14, as stipulated by the Constitution of India so as to ensure minimal schooling and which also envisages a budget of more than 6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it is still non-disputatious that drop out levels are too high in almost every region where these resources and initiatives are influential.

Even after five years of implementation of the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP), not much progress has been done so far on the promises or announcements with regard to developing the poor state of affairs in the Education sector in India. As a matter of fact, the proportion of total government expenditure on basic education has declined from around 11.1 percent of the GDP in 2000-2001 to around 9.98 percent during the UPA rule. These facts infer that the stipulated budget doesn't become fully existential or it doesn't reach the targeted public institutions. Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, a scheme initiated by our former Prime Minister Late. Rajiv Gandhi to provide good quality modern education to the children predominantly from the rural areas, without regard to their family's socio-economic condition proves to be a very valuable scheme for children of the rural community but the scheme is predominant only in some regions of the country. Also the scheme is located nowhere in TamilNadu. Such non-uniformity in universalizing education across the nation is also a factor that can be attributed to plummeting literacy rates that differ in different regions of the nation. Overall, two third of the population has remained out of school, 40% of the population is illiterate and only 15% of the students reach high school according to current estimates. To abate these imbalances and to ensure education for all children up to the age of 14 as stipulated by the Constitution of India in the NPE, I recommend a new system of education which I would name as "SMS", the acronym for Student Minimal Schooling. The name may seem ordinary and simply relevant to what we are discussing about but as I bring up the features and benefits of this scheme, I believe one shall apprehend them and I certainly aver the scheme would be well suitable for the Indian society which will be justified as we discuss about it.

The Mid Day Meal scheme in public schools proves helping with regard to food and reduces the burden of unaffordable parents to some extent. But looking at a macroscopic point of view, we have to think whether providing food to the students alone helps to achieve India's vision of ensuring minimal schooling. It is a fact that apart from free lunch, the students who fall under the category of Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) (as classified by the government in 1960) savor various other amenities provided by the government. All students attending public schools do not fall under these two categories. It is a general consensus that the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are provided for in many of India's educational programmes. Special reservations are provided for them and a reservation of 15% in Kendriya Vidyalaya (a system of central government schools under the Ministry of Human Resource, Government of India) for Scheduled Castes and another reservation of 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes is an instance to commend here. Due to this, many other students who fall under various other categories apart from SC and ST (again as classified by the government of India) do not relish all the amenities that are provided for those reserved students.

So according to my SMS scheme, first of all this disparity between different sects of students has to be completely ruled out in order to achieve minimal schooling up to the age of 14 for all students in India. If a question arises as to how then the students belonging to SC and ST can afford to join schools without reservation, my answer would be what if the government had not framed these rules and reservations. After the amendment was made by the government in 1975 to the total number of SC and ST groups in India, there was an ambience of self-security for their future among all the SCs and STs who according to the government deserve reservation in schools, colleges and even in occupation but overall it has created an imbalance in normalizing the structure of imparting equal education to the children of our nation.

Next, as stated before, the stipulated budget for education doesn't reach the public schools or it doesn't become existential. Is the government becoming reluctant day by day in concentrating on education, particularly among the rural masses where it really needs to emphasize on caring the unaffordable children by ensuring mid-day meal, free books and transportation? If we ask this question to those engrossed in gaining statistics, the answer would be 'Yes'. While it is true that the budget spent on education mainly focuses on free lunch for all students enrolled in public schools, the government has to increase its impetus more on other amenities to be offered to students apart from lunch like free books, transportation facilities and also in conducting various other intra-mural activities including inter-state exhibition, sports, cultural activities, etc which are always predominant in private schools. It doesn't mean that free lunch alone would invite much of the rural students to join public schools. What if they cannot afford to buy books, pay tuition fees and spend daily for transportation from remote places?

So offering these benefits would be the next constituent of my SMS plan that would quench the need of minimal schooling in our country. For sure this would make much more sense among the rural communities in our country because these are basically the essential needs of students who cannot complete schooling due to lack of such facilities which they have to personally afford to do to take care of themselves. Also this would not mean lavish expenditure or spendthrift behavior on the part of government because as cited before the budget on education has to be more than 6% of GDP which India, as a developing country, can really afford to make. If India really has to emerge as a developed nation, the crux of achieving this lies in compulsory fulfillment of minimal education which in turn lies in the expenditure by government to meet the needs of the students with craving desire for education.

The one last feature of my SMS plan is to increase the Teacher-Student ratio per class. According to the data given by UNESCO, the ratio is 1:37 in lower-secondary classes and it is 1:40 in primary classes among the public schools. This ratio is much better in private schools where the ratio is 1:31. Also more teachers in private schools are females when compared to public schools. The attitude of a teacher, according to me, greatly influences the mindset of young students. It is at such an immature stage the students start learning and it is true that in most of the cases female teachers will be able to make a bias and recognize every individual student so as to nurture the concepts they teach with an emotional stability. Nevertheless, drop-outs are also attributed to the behavior of teacher towards the student and this is evident from the news and various forms of media in which we have witnessed such cases. With regard to this, my SMS scheme states that the ratio of Teacher to student in a class of a public school can, on an average, be 1:25 which is a very effective ratio according to researches. One may guess the obvious advantage that is concomitant with this ratio. Yes, the employment opportunity for trained teachers shoots up and it particularly enhances employment for women. Thus if this feature of SMS is incorporated, it would lead to more attention on an individual basis and can considerably lead to reduction in drop-out rates which forms the basis for minimal schooling.

To summarize, the SMS scheme covers three main features, removal of disparity between the SC/STs and non SC/STs by withdrawing the reservation policy, increment in government expenditure to meet all the needs of students attending public schools and increasing the Teacher-Student ratio with employment of more female teachers so as to bring down drop-out rates. I assure if the scheme is incorporated by the Government of India, it would be the key factor in contributing towards reduction in drop-out rates, ensure minimal schooling and make India emerge as a global leader in the field of education. Also the third feature of increasing the Teacher-Student ratio increases employment opportunities for teachers, so I believe there are no offsetting remarks that underweight the scheme in anyway. I assure the SMS scheme is formulated by taking into consideration the way Indian society accepts a scheme to be suitable for it and this, of course, will be relevant to our culture where we see unity in diversity.