Abstract
About four decades ago, J.P. Naik drew our attention to ‘the elusive triangle’ that confronted Indian education—equality, quality and quantity (1979). The insightful essays, in India Education Report: Progress of Basic Education, edited by Govinda and Sedwal, are likely to remind readers of ‘the elusive triangle’ and the need to revisit these fundamental challenges facing the Indian education system in the present time of international goal setting in education.
The chapters in the book were originally written as papers for the mid-term assessment of Education for All in India and presented at the National Seminar on Education for All in September, 2009 held at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi. The mid-term review project was conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India and was sponsored by UNESCO and UNICEF. In the ‘Introduction: Basic Education for All in India—Tracking Progress’, the volume editors offer a comprehensive review of the progress of education in India. They refer to the period 2000–2010 as a ‘watershed decade’ and chronicle the significant events that took place during this period, including the launching of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the 86th Amendment to the Constitution of India which made education a fundamental right for children between the ages of 6 and 14 years, the imposition of an education cess for mobilising additional financial resources, the adoption of the National Curriculum Framework, the formulation and launch of Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, the adoption of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, and the launching of the Saakshar Bharat Programme for universal adult literacy. The editors then track the progress made by India on the six goals announced at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal (2000) and discuss some unresolved issues such as education of out-of-school children, universal preschool education, examination of learning and educational attainments, monitoring of schools and their quality, appointment of teachers and their professional development, and inequities within schooling. Although this chapter contains rich data and insightful analysis, it does not identify the persistent gaps that exist despite the plethora of laws, policies and programmes, that may require further inquiry.
The introductory chapter sets the tone for the contributions that follow. The book is divided into two sections. Section I, ‘Thematic Reviews’, consists of eight chapters, which focus on the six Education for All (EFA) goals. Section II, ‘State Reviews’, has four chapters, each focusing on one state.
The section ‘Thematic Reviews’ begins with the chapter ‘Early Childhood Care and Education in India’ by Venita Kaul and Deepa Sankar, which provides a comprehensive policy and programmatic framework on early childhood care and education. Kaul and Sankar discuss the questions of coverage, equity and public spending for young children, supported by a variety of data sources.
The second chapter, ‘Universal Elementary Education: Pursuit of Equity with Quality’ by Manabi Majumdar, provides a sharp analysis based on indicators like gross enrolment rate, infrastructure, school participation rate and recruitment of teachers in light of regional disparities. Majumdar also raises questions about transitional bottlenecks and the need for an integrated approach to pre-primary, primary and upper-primary schools, and for improving pupil–teacher relations within the framework of hierarchy, accountability and autonomy.
The third chapter, ‘Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning’ by Ila Patel, offers a comprehensive overview of the challenge of propagating literacy, regional gender variations, national plans and programmes, and the financing of adult education. Patel describes the evolution of adult literacy efforts into programmes of education for lifelong learning, in keeping with the EFA goal that looks beyond mere literacy.
The fourth chapter, ‘Towards Gender Equality in Education’ by Vimala Ramachandran, provides a detailed overview of national efforts aimed at promoting gender equality in education. She also addresses the challenges in achieving this goal due to problems of dropout and retention, the issue of learning outcomes, and multiple disadvantages confronting girls who seek education.
The fifth chapter, ‘Reaffirming the Vision for Quality and Equality in Education’ by Anita Rampal, discusses the issues of quality and equality by asking if equality in policy translates into uniformity in the curriculum, by reviewing the global debate on quality, and examining the notion of quality emerging from this debate, and also by looking at the questions of the pupil’s voice in the debate on quality and the widening of the quality divide in India.
In the sixth chapter, ‘Reclaiming the ‘Space’ for Teachers to Address the UEE: Teaching-Learning Quality Deficit’, Poonam Batra drives home the centrality of teachers in the discourse on teaching-learning and quality. Batra provides critical insights into the issue by discussing questions of teacher agency, teacher identity, teacher recruitment, and teacher education. She suggests promoting plurality and alternative models of education and fostering linkages between school and higher education to addresss the question of quality in a meaningful way.
Chapter seven is ‘Management of Elementary Education: Structures and Strategies’ by Rahul Mukhopadhyay, N. Ramkumar and A.R. Vasavi. Using data from Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, the authors talk about structural hierarchies, decentralisation, convergence, accountability mechanisms, community participation and awareness of stakeholders within the education system.
Complementing this is Chapter eight, ‘The Challenges of Public Finance’ by Praveen Jha and Pooja Parvati, which provides rich data on, and useful insights into issues related to the financing of education. It discusses the key indicators on outcomes and infrastructure with regard to elementary education, trends in public expenditures, budget expenditures in select states, and the various bottlenecks in implementing SSA.
In India, education is a concurrent subject, with state governments playing a substantial role in the implementation of various policy goals. Section II, ‘State Reviews’, is a compilation of case studies of four states, namely, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Tripura, roughly representing the four major regions of India. The chapters in this section are written by, or alongwith, senior government officials and describe the progress made by the states with regard to the fulfilment of EFA goals and targets.
In chapter nine, ‘Himachal Pradesh: Tackling the Issue of Quality Education’, Meera Samson and B.K. Sondhi discuss school enrolment rates, the extent of privatisation, student performance in annual examinations, curriculum changes in the state and the need for structural change in education administration. In tenth chapter, ‘Maharashtra: Targeting Vulnerable Population Groups’, Kumud Bansal and J.M. Abhyankar analyse inter-district disparities despite the progress on education access and retention. They specifically discuss the problems of out-of-school children, the high concentration of urban working children, and the high proportion of school dropouts in urban areas, highlighting the need to address quality-related concerns and to introduce systemic reforms at the administrative and financial levels. In eleventh chapter, ‘Tamil Nadu: Progress and Prospects’, R. Vidyasagar, R. Akila and R. Elangovan examine the question of school quality and assess state initiatives like Activity Based Learning, but also underline the need for better infrastructure and in-service teacher education in light of the inequality between rural and urban schooling. In twelfth chapter, ‘Tripura: Overcoming Multiple Barriers’, S. Homchaudhuri and Ajit Ch. Das discuss the progress made on the Education for All programme and the strategies used for improving overall literacy and community empowerment programmes. The authors also call attention to the problems of out-of-school adolescents and youths in Tripura.
The volume, with contributions by renowned experts and scholars with decades of experience in the subject as well as senior education bureaucrats, is a valuable resource for all those interested in understanding, researching and working on the Indian education system. The figures, boxes and tables are informative and well organised. The volume also offers an exhaustive review of the education scenario in India organised around the EFA goals. However, it has a few limitations. First, the editors mention that the national seminar (which was the main source of the papers or chapters) had seen the submission of 27 state reviews. But there is no explanation as to why only four states were selected for this volume, since it would have been helpful to understand the progress on EFA in more states (although there would have been some obvious limitations in including all states). Second, the organisation of the contents around the EFA goals means leaving out some of the key dimensions of Indian education that have current significance such as privatisation, learning quality and assessment. Although some of the thematic chapters and state reviews do refer to these issues, they do not receive full-length treatment as they are not part of the EFA goals. Third, even though the volume contains updated versions of papers that were first published in 2009 about the EFA agenda, the contents are somewhat dated because the EFA agenda itself was reviewed and revised in 2015, with the Incheon Declaration for Education 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. These developments have not been included in the volume. Since the progress of basic education in India will now be tracked in terms of attainment of SDG Goal 4, and the corresponding targets and indicators, it would have been useful to read about India’s progress on basic education under EFA and the implications for meeting these new goals. Indeed, a critical piece on international political compacts such as the earlier EFA and the current SDGs, and how they have influenced domestic policy-making, programming, data gathering and monitoring, would have added immense value to our understanding of the current situation.
Despite these limitations, the succinct essays in this volume present an in-depth account of the progress on meeting the EFA goals. They will also help readers understand the ‘elusive triangle’ proposed by Naik a little better and prompt them to think about what it would take to meet the goals of equality, quality and quantity of education in India.