Yamini Aiyar
How do we deliver elementary education effectively and accountably to India’s children? This question is becoming increasingly more relevant as India begins work to implement the recently passed Right to Education Act (RTE). See here for an interesting review by Rukmini Banerji of James Tooley’s latest book, The Beautiful Tree. The book is an effort to address one critical question: “If public education is so dismal and time-consuming to reform to make it better for poor people...could private schools be a quicker, easier, more effective solution?” The review raises the issue of local ownership as holding the key to effective and accountable delivery. Can better decentralization improve education outcomes? And if so, what is the best design through which this should be done?
The RTE has many provisions for ensuring accountability through decentralization, including the creation of school management committees (SMC) empowered to make plans and monitor school-level expenditures. But as is well known in India, the devil lies in the implementation. How effectively these accountability provisions will work on the ground depends on getting the ‘right’ design that will ensure accountability and transparency in implementation process. How can this be achieved?
If there is one lesson to take home from India’s past experience, particularly with the implementation of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, it is that simply creating decentralized institutions such as the Village Education Committees (VEC) that ‘invite’ local participation in planning does not itself result in effective decentralized delivery – it is now widely accepted that VECs for the most part are defunct. Local institutions need to be nurtured and resourced. They need to be provided with information and capacity, and perhaps most importantly, the system needs to create incentives that make local participation meaningful. How do we ensure this in the RTE? Now as bureaucrats are at the drawing board developing the rules and guidelines for the implementation of the RTE, this issue needs to be seriously debated so that for once we get the ‘implementation design’ right.
Yamini Aiyar is Director of Accountability Initiative
I am pessimistic that local communities and institutions can become meaningful, engaged and effective over-seers of basic schooling. At least two factors militate against them being so: first, institutions such as School Management Committees (SMCs) have no 'teeth' under the RTE. The original 2005 draft of the Bill gave SMCs the power to appoint teachers, distribute teacher salaries, deduct pay based on absences and utilise grants for school maintenance. These powers were not retained in the final Bill. The only functions of SMCs in the Bill are to monitor the school, prepare a school development plan, and monitor the utilisation of government grants. The second major factor that militates against local people being able to bring schools to account is the large social / economic difference between the teacher and the local population. Teacher salaries as a multiple of state per capita income were already quite high but after the 6th Pay Commission, the ratio is estimated to be 17:1 in Uttar Pradesh. Rural per capita GDP is even lower than state average per capita GDP, so the ratio is likely even higher in rural areas. Such a vast social distance between the teachers and the taught is likely to put parents and the community in a weak position to demand accountability from teachers and to effectively monitor the school.
ReplyDeleteVery nicely done indeed.I think listening to your members is key and ACTING on the info they share/provide is also important. Taking their feedback, knowledge etc and doing something with that information..whether that means promoting it so other members can benefit or making changes to how the community is run, features it includes, etc. Certainly you should communicate how you are acting on the info your members provide.Don't forget that another way to build online community is to leave your own community from time to time and visit others.
ReplyDeletethanks
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