Mute Spectator : Dealing with No-detention
February 06, 2020
The
Tamil Nadu government has withdrawn its decision to conduct public examination
for classes V and VIII. This decision comes in response to the severe criticism
from several quarters- from academicians to students, claiming that Public
exams and the No-detention policy may act as deterrent for children from
attending school. Although this argument may seem convincing, like everything
else, education in India is much more nuanced and through this post we will try
to understand, at least a small part of, the behemoth called the Indian
education system.
Understanding
No-detention
The rationale for
No-detention comes from various committee reports since the British period like
the Hartog Commission (1929) to Kothari Commission (1964-66) and various Central
Advisory Board of Education (CABE) committee reports among others. The
committees deemed detention to be ‘Wastage’ of early years that pushed children
out of schools. So, in the pursuit of inclusive education, the government
passed the Right to Education act (RTE) in 2010. This act among other things
banned schools from detaining children in the same class up until class eight,
i.e, a school cannot fail any child for poor performance, taking it further, no
exams up until ninth standard.
The basic argument stems
from the fact that failure discourages and demotivates thereby pushing children
out of school, especially in poor areas. This argument bore fruit when drop-out
rates of primary schools plummeted from 30.3 during 2009-10 to 4.13 in 2014-15.
More children became students, i.e, the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) increased up
to 99% in 2014-15. All these improvements are in a way the direct result of RTE
and the No-detention policy advocated by it. But as always in case of
government intervention, there is a huge area of uncharted territory where the
unintended consequences loom large.
Perfect
is the Enemy of Good
As mentioned earlier, the
primary drop-out rate for the year 2014-15 is 4.13 but the rate increased
exponentially to 17.16 for secondary school, i.e, when they reach class nine. Children
find it difficult to cope up with sudden examination when they reach the ninth
grade and thus drop out of school. Thus the perfect legislation for making
education inclusive, in essence, has only pushed children from dropping out of
school by three years. One might still consider the legislation a success
because at least it provided elementary education for all. Well, no!
Elementary education is the
basis of any developed economy but in India, it is in tatters. The quality has been compromised so much so
that in 2016, 58% of children in class III were unable to read class I level
text. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), in 2019, 50.8%
of children in class III were not able to read class I level text but almost
90% of children were enrolled in some kind of educational institution. This
provides for a paradox where increasing number of children are going to schools
but they don’t seem to learn better.
As Madhav Chavan, the
president of Pratham Educational Foundation which releases ASER, writes:
Just
when it seemed like the ASER results were getting repetitive, the Right to
Education Act was passed (in 2009) and suddenly things began to change. In ASER
2010, we first noticed that the proportion of children in private schools was
growing and learning levels had begun to decline. But the Ministry of Human
Resource Development officially neither recognised ASER nor did it accept its
findings as far as learning levels were concerned.
In search of the perfect
silver bullet to rid the entire education system of its flaws, the government
clogged the system with more problems which can only be resolved by structural
review of the system with hard facts and data.
Inputs
and Outcomes
Governments are reluctant
to reform, their cobweb bureaucracy and intense political rhetoric wouldn’t let
them. So when they go back on their previous arrangement, it means things are
really bad. These changes are to be really studied rather than just flying out
the most basic argument against it. No-detention policy does not work, period!
It creates an environment suitable for stagnation and irresponsibility,
prerequisites for a dysfunctional bureaucracy. There is no incentive for
teachers to teach and no incentives for students to learn because there are no
consequences for poor performance. One thing we learn from public choice theory
is that people won’t do anything until there are right incentives. So as
governments, it should provide them the necessary incentives to reach the
desired goal. Nobel Prize winner Abhijit Banerjee puts it perfectly: The public education [system] is a system
for the teachers, by the teachers and in the interests of the teachers. This is
a system which essentially does not want any metric of performance.
Measuring outcomes rather
than inputs. The existing system focuses only the inputs- enrollment ratio,
money invested, syllabus completion, food provided among others. Let’s assume
there is a Paati who makes vadais. She can invest and cook many vadais continuously but if she doesn’t
taste it, she can’t know if it really tastes good and if people will like it.
Now, taste may depend on many factors- salt, pepper or the flour but the only
way to find it is to taste the outcome, simple as that!
Outcomes of the education
system can be effectively measured with exams thereby making them absolutely
necessary. Vivek Kaul in his book India’sBig Government, reports an interesting incident in Rajasthan. Parents met
the then Chief Minister Vasundra Raje during her outreach programme and
suggested that the ban on exams was not in the best interests of children. A
September 2014 news report suggested that the state was considering exams in
Standards III, V and VIII.
Testing
times
Exams in India has become a
societal problem due to the pressure applied on the students to score more
marks. The reason for making examinations, especially public board
examinations, pressurizing has many factors but the factors are beyond the
scope of this article. But the problem of primary testing is rather easy to
solve. If a government wants more people to pay taxes, it lowers the tax slabs
and does not cancel taxation altogether; likewise for more people to get basic
education, testing and exams have to be made simpler instead of cancelling the
exam altogether. Primary results could be declared separately for each class,
exams could focus more on basic skills, arrear based approach are some of the
suggestion to make exams less intense for primary school goers.
Due to continuous
mismanagement and ill-performance, government schools are being deserted in
favour of private ones. ASER reports that parents are enrolling boys
increasingly in private schools while girls are left back at public schools.
The private schools too are being strangled by ‘good intentions’ through legislation like RTE making them comply
with unnecessary regulations. People must stop making silly arguments like
students of bureaucrats and politicians should be allowed only to public
schools and start addressing the structural issue of education and consequences
of government intervention in India.
India houses the highest
working age population, something economists call the Demographic Dividend. To
exploit this and propel India into higher growth, primary education is a
prerequisite. As the future is moving towards skill based rather than degree
based recruitment, it is necessary to develop basic foundation without which
India might also miss the Fourth bus for growth. One must understand that these
no-detention policies and cancellation of exams only give the Right to Schools
and not Education. Schools does not mean Education the same way that growth
does not mean development.
By Benolin
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