The Union HRD Ministry has drafted two legislations recently - The “HECI Bill and the RTE (amendment) Bill”.
Both seem to lack quality thinking and foresight to better the ed-sector.
What are the two bills about?
HECI - Draft bill for “Higher Education Commission of India” (HECI) for replacing “University Grants Commission” (UGC) has been released.
It has now been put to public consultation and received more than 10,000 suggestions/comments from various stakeholders.
RTE - Right to Education (Amendment) Bill, 2018, was passed by the Lok Sabha recently and is now before the Rajya Sabha.
It seeks to eliminate the no-detention policy and reintroduce testing for Classes V and VIII students to stem the degradation of education quality.
Why - A number of reports and data validate our concerns of plummeting standards in education, which triggered a need for a thorough policy shift.
The recent bill has been proposed in this context, but they at best seem short-sighted with little clarity.
What are the issues with the HECI Bill?
National Knowledge Commission Report (2006) and the Yashpal Committee on Higher Education (2009) did recommend a new regulator to replace UGC.
But many concerns have been flagged by stakeholders on the HECI Bill, as it seems to want to replace UGC with a more flawed set up.
The proposed bill will lead to over-centralisation and enhance political interference as Union HRD ministry is envisioned as the fund disposal authority for universities.
Further, the Bill allows the Chairperson of the new Commission to be a member of the Central government (which was explicitly banned in UGC).
The bill also transgresses the autonomy of higher educational institutions by allowing micromanagement on aspects like syllabi.
The new over-arching body does not involve the States sufficiently and or accommodate the diverse needs of the country.
Therefore, instead of this half-hearted measure, the government would have been better off plugging the loopholes in the UGC.
What is the proposed RTE (amendment) majorly premised on?
The Right to Education (RTE) Bill 2018 proposes to do away with the current policy that children cannot be detained till they complete Class VIII.
This gives States the option of holding regular examinations either at the end of Class V or Class VIII, or both, and failures can also be detained if necessary.
This would potentially push out many children who are unable to meet standards because of their lack of access to quality education.
Notably, the no-detention policy was to be implemented together with continuous assessment for identify learning deficiencies and correcting them.
However, as the system has failed to provide continuous assessment, there was a constant deterioration of education quality.
While the policy rollback was to stem this trend, this can lead to students becoming discouraged and precipitate in higher dropout rates.
Was No-detention policy a failure?
The no-detention policy is successful in the sense that it has effectively stemmed the dropout rate in enrolments to high school.
However, if the aim is to improve learning outcomes, then multiple other aspects of the RTE are to have been focused on.
Besides maintaining a good pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), proper infrastructure like all-weather buildings, barrier-free access in schools are to be ensured.
Further, separate toilets for boys and girls is another pertinent measure to improve qualitative standards enshrined in the RTE.
Also, other infrastructure aspects like libraries, playgrounds need to improve from the current dismal state of affairs.
How is funding affecting RTE?
Poor funding is a major reason for the dismal implementation of RTE.
Further, quality-related interventions accounted for only 9% of the total approved RTE budget in 2016-17.
Also, funding for “Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan”, which is the main vehicle to implement RTE, has remained much below the resource estimated need.
Interestingly, better off states like Kerala that properly budget and spend the allocated amount, plan to continue with the no-detention policy.
