Privatisation of education is not a panacea

To succeed, there has to be a robust State-led supervision system

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Wednesday said the government needs to exit infrastructure projects and even look at handing over schools and colleges to the private sector as is the case in Canada and Australia. He was, however, critical of India’s private sector, saying it has created a crisis in the public-private partnership (PPP) model. The idea of PPP in education is not a new one; over the years, thanks to the dipping quality of education in government-run schools in India, there has been a demand for private intervention. But in India, the experience of PPP in education has been a mixed one. Two years ago, the Rajasthan government unveiled a PPP model to hand over more than 70,000 State-run schools to the private sector but had to be scrapped after 3.5 lakh teachers resisted the move.

At the international level, the mood, however, is towards private-public partnership. The Sustainable Development Goals 2030 also talks about the PPP model, but mostly in the infrastructure sector. However, PPPs cannot be a panacea in any sector unless there is a robust institutional framework to oversee its implementation. A UN report — PPPs and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development — stresses that for PPPs to become successful, it is necessary that countries have in place “the institutional capacity to create, manage, and evaluate them”.

The Goal number 4 of SDGs says that by 2030, governments will have to ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes. If India wants to reach this goal via the PPP route, then it is imperative that the government systems are upgraded to keep a hawk eye on the progress of such partnerships. But present India doesn’t seem to be ready and equipped for such an overhaul.