Written By: Karthik Sharma, a second-year student at the National Law Institute University, Bhopal

Introduction

You’re reading this, a blog post in English, on a device that can browse the internet, you’re privileged. A lot of people in our country are not privileged, and this directly translates to the education that an individual receives.

There has been tremendous growth in the number of private schools offering primary education. This growth has been primarily due to the variance in the quality of education. Private schools tend to be more accountable and therefore provide better quality education when compared to public schools. There is a difference in the quality of education, which will be addressed in the next section. Additionally, this piece will briefly look into the state of Kerala, as its public schools tend to bridge the gap in the educational standards.

What are the differences?

Some differences are seen across public schools and private schools. Teachers in public schools and private schools have similar rates of attendance. However, teachers in private schools have 11 to 18% higher activity rates. It must be noted that activity rates vary across states, and a general blanket statement cannot be made. The differences are more pronounced when one delves into the socio-economic composition of the students.

Private schools have fewer students from SC and ST households, and the students are more likely to be male. Furthermore, the parents on average are educated above primary schools. They also come from families where their earnings are not from household or land labour, and their landholdings are more than the median.

A statistical study titled, How do Government and Private Schools Differ, took into account the test scores of students in public and private schools within the states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. There is a good deal of variance is the test scores; however, the correlation between commonly used indicators like teacher quality was cloudy. Additionally, the study noted that the teacher effort was not dependent on the qualification of the teachers, therefore paying the teachers on their qualification may not be effective.

In, A comparative study on public and private funded schools in Chennai, it was noted that 75.5% of the parents that took a survey stated that the teaching methods were unsuitable and 88.5% found the poor discipline in public schools to be a deterrent factor. The study found that an overwhelming percentage of parents chose private schools over public schools due to the fact that English was the medium of instruction in most private schools.

Government Primary Education in Kerala

Kerala is a state which is praised for its education system within India. In 2019, it topped the School Education Quality Index (SEQI) by NITI Aayog, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, and the World Bank, which detailed the education quality in schools across states. Indeed, there was always an underlying culture that placed requisite importance on education across communities. However, there are certainly takeaways that other states can implement in their primary public education systems. The high level of educational accessibility and quality in Kerala has had a direct impact on the Human Development Index in the state. Government schools play a huge role in ensuring the accessibility and quality of education.

An analysis of the education sector in Kerala showed that the faculty is competent and qualified. Additionally, the schools not only have the physical infrastructure, but the digital infrastructure required to keep up with the digital revolution. Lastly, the government and social support offered to the schools play a huge role in ensuring that the teachers and students are motivated to perform.

A Personal Anecdote: In July of 2016, I visited a public school in Kottur, Thiruvananthapuram. The students in the school came from the tribal regions in and around Kottur. Some of them have to wake up early and walk kilometres before they reach school, or some of them hitch a ride on the government jeep that wades through the thick and dense forests to ensure that the kids studying in the school reach the school on time. The morning bells rang, and everyone, from small kids brimming with joy to the early teens giggling and whispering stood in attention to the national anthem. After which the young voices screamed, “India is my country and all Indians are my brothers and sisters”. The students then went to their classes while I overheard the teachers and the headmistress talking about a student who was absent for three days.

Entering the classrooms, I was pleasantly surprised. All the classrooms had windows and ceiling fans, the children had benches and desks to sit down and place their books, each class had a blackboard filled with the dusky but vibrant colours of chalk pictures. Further, the computer labs had computers in them, and students learnt the basics of browsing the internet and using basic software. The headmistress commented while I was in the lab that “Electricity is a problem that the school faces, however, they are actively working towards ensuring an uninterrupted flow of electricity”. At noon the students lined up and sat outside to have their mid-day meal. A nutritious serving of food filled with vegetables and rice was placed before the children as they sat, talked, giggled, and ate the food.

This reinforces the statistical evidence that pointed towards the success of public schools in Kerala. A school so far away from towns and cities has all the things necessary to ensure that the students leave the school so that they can contribute to society. The teachers put in a great amount of effort, in ensuring that every student is provided with the necessary impetus to push ahead in life. No child who comes to the school leaves home hungry, this provides, both the parents an additional advantage to send their kids to school. Furthermore, the proactive steps taken by the government, for example, hiring jeeps so that students themselves don’t have to put themselves out in harm’s way while traversing the dense forests in Kottur increases accessibility.

An amalgamation of all of this sets Kerala apart as an outlier while looking at primary education offered by the government in. public schools.

Conclusion

Public education at the primary level varies across states. In the first section of this piece, I delved into a report on the status of governmental education in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The reports suggest that there is a significant difference in the quality of education offered in private schools and public schools. This difference cannot be singularly attributed to the factor of accountability. Private schools indeed have an environment that holds teachers accountable for their actions. Still, accountability is not the only contributor to the dissonance in the quality of education. Furthermore, policymakers rely on factors like expertise and experience to chart out indices, as suggested by the report, the correlation between experience and quality of education is cloudy and must not be extensively relied upon to formulate policy.

Kerala is an outlier with regards to public education. The government schools in Kerala consistently outperform schools in other states. The answer to this lies in a lot of factors. Everything from infrastructure, to social and governmental impetus, plays a major role in ensuring that the quality of primary education in public schools is at par with the quality of education in private schools. The educational accessibility is a huge factor in the overall development of Kerala as a state, leading to which the UNDP in 2013 announced that Kerala is the only state with a high level of human development in India.

Accessible and quality primary education will play a huge role in the future of the country. Today’s children form tomorrow’s future, and revitalizing public education is an important step in ensuring that the future is secure.