An Allahabad High Court on Tuesday directed the Uttar Pradesh government that elected representatives, government employees, members of the judiciary and any other person drawing a salary from the public exchequer must send their children to government-run schools. The judge held that if the children of government officials were in state-run schools, these institutions would function well.
The Allahabad court order follows a petition challenging the selection process for Associate Teachers for government-run primary and junior high schools in Uttar Pradesh over the past few years. Uttar Pradesh is short of nearly three lakh primary and upper schoolteachers. The government primary schools, on average, have just three teachers per school. Changes in recruitment rules and the numerous legal challenges to these have exacerbated the problem. The court said that the state's Basic Education department’s "mindless, negligent, casual amendments" of rules were to blame.
In his ruling the judge said:
Where the majority studies
There is absolutely no doubt that the judge’s order will be challenged before it can be implemented in the stipulated six-month period. The number of government employees with a child in a state-run school is thin on the ground. Even teachers in government schools don’t send their children to the schools they work in. Across the length and breadth of the country, anyone who can afford private schooling (priced between Rs 200 to Rs 2,00,000 a month) sends their children to private school or to government-aided schools, which are managed by private bodies but largely funded by the state.
There is no evidence to suggest that the average private school is significantly better than the average government school. Yet the consensus seems to be that government schools don’t educate their pupils. With the exception of “premier” government schools like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and various types of "model" schools in different states, government school students tend to be from families that are either too poor to pay for their education or live in places where there is no private option.
It is important to note that despite the marked social preference for private schools, a majority of Indian children still attend government schools. Over 62% of the children in classes I to V and over 58% of the children in classes VI to VII are in government-run schools and a majority are from the “reserved” communities and minorities. From this we can infer that majority of Indian children and those from the most vulnerable social groups are in schools that are believed to be no good.
Against this background, the Allahabad court judgement offers a sharp critique of the state-run education system. It goes to the very heart of the question: Why are government schools so badly run? By stipulating that anyone drawing a salary from the state send their progeny to a state-run school, the judgement also gives us the answer: they are badly run because, they are run for other people’s children.
The absence of self-interest makes the people paid to administer school education (minister down to school teacher) unmindful of the consequences of their ill-thought out polices for the children in these schools. The judgement seeks to change all this in Uttar Pradesh. Even if its fails in this, it will have forcefully drawn attention to a major cause of the criminal negligence of school education for the majority of India’s children.
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The Allahabad court order follows a petition challenging the selection process for Associate Teachers for government-run primary and junior high schools in Uttar Pradesh over the past few years. Uttar Pradesh is short of nearly three lakh primary and upper schoolteachers. The government primary schools, on average, have just three teachers per school. Changes in recruitment rules and the numerous legal challenges to these have exacerbated the problem. The court said that the state's Basic Education department’s "mindless, negligent, casual amendments" of rules were to blame.
In his ruling the judge said:
"If a little care would have been there on the part of responsible officers in making legislations for recruitment, huge litigations resulting in lakhs of vacancies in primary schools maintained by the UP Board would not have been caused".
Where the majority studies
There is absolutely no doubt that the judge’s order will be challenged before it can be implemented in the stipulated six-month period. The number of government employees with a child in a state-run school is thin on the ground. Even teachers in government schools don’t send their children to the schools they work in. Across the length and breadth of the country, anyone who can afford private schooling (priced between Rs 200 to Rs 2,00,000 a month) sends their children to private school or to government-aided schools, which are managed by private bodies but largely funded by the state.
There is no evidence to suggest that the average private school is significantly better than the average government school. Yet the consensus seems to be that government schools don’t educate their pupils. With the exception of “premier” government schools like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and various types of "model" schools in different states, government school students tend to be from families that are either too poor to pay for their education or live in places where there is no private option.
It is important to note that despite the marked social preference for private schools, a majority of Indian children still attend government schools. Over 62% of the children in classes I to V and over 58% of the children in classes VI to VII are in government-run schools and a majority are from the “reserved” communities and minorities. From this we can infer that majority of Indian children and those from the most vulnerable social groups are in schools that are believed to be no good.
Against this background, the Allahabad court judgement offers a sharp critique of the state-run education system. It goes to the very heart of the question: Why are government schools so badly run? By stipulating that anyone drawing a salary from the state send their progeny to a state-run school, the judgement also gives us the answer: they are badly run because, they are run for other people’s children.
The absence of self-interest makes the people paid to administer school education (minister down to school teacher) unmindful of the consequences of their ill-thought out polices for the children in these schools. The judgement seeks to change all this in Uttar Pradesh. Even if its fails in this, it will have forcefully drawn attention to a major cause of the criminal negligence of school education for the majority of India’s children.