BMC Budget must prioritise education
The BMC is proposing to bring about cosmetic changes in the schools without addressing the basic issues which are poor quality of education, high dropout rate and sub-standard mid-day meals. The main problem is the lack of effective supervision and control and the failure to check the graft among civic officials and middle men.
On February 2, Ajay Mehta, Municipal Commissioner, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has presented the budget for the year 2018-19. Out of the total outlay of Rs 27,258 crore, the allocation to education is Rs 2569 core -11% increase over the last year. Nearly 4 lakh children study in 1038 primary and 149 secondary BMC schools. The children of workers, maids, auto-taxi drivers etc. belong to the deprived section of city’s 130 million population, living in slums, come to these schools, as they have no other option and just cannot afford private schools. What they need is quality basic education first to uplift from the suffocating social environment in which they grow and to dream of making a future.
The good elementary education should mean learning effectively three Rs -- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. This is where the students in the state run and the municipal schools loose out. In India, about 25% students in the age of 14-18 are unable to read basic text and 57 % can’t do simple division and find it difficult to cope with elementary math and English. They do not have the required knowledge, skills and opportunities to prepare for life.
The BMC schools are facing a huge drop out problem. Teachers, methods of teaching, learning and quality of education should be the primary focus of civic-run schools. In an attempt to provide facilities and high-end technology, the basic focus on improving the quality of education is lost. The civic body is providing 27 items for free -- tabs, virtual classrooms and other facilities -- but it should concentrate more on improving the teaching and learning process.
The civic body is proposing to start 35 new English medium schools under PPP, affiliated to central and international boards -- CBSE, IGCSE, and ICSE -adopting intentional curriculum. According to Shubhada Gudekar, Chairperson, Education Committee, “the education in these schools will be free of cost and the private partner will have academic control, including the decision to pick the board. It will also hire teachers and pay them.” This is an attempt to corporatise the primary education even in the schools meant for the poorest of the poor children. As the teachers’ union leader Ramesh Joshi said, ‘by giving civic schools to private trusts, BMC will compromise with quality education.” It is abdicating its primary social responsibility.
Besides, it is also proposing to start 24 international schools -- one in each ward. This is an answer to parents demanding for English medium schools, as evident from what Shubhada Gudekar said, “Nowadays even a domestic servant dreams of sending his/her child to an English medium school. Hence, we have put our focus on English medium schools.” This is a misplaced priority. The BMC seems to be copying the state government model of privatising education, without realising the fact that only the poor children of weaker section study in the civic schools.
This will lead to elitism and create two classes of children in the civic schools. What is the point in setting apart 59 schools from the rest when the need is to ensure the minimum basic standards of education uniformly in all the schools? Further, from the academic year 2018-19, the civic body is proposing to have 649 bi-lingual schools to familiarise the children with mother tongue and English. Why bilingual? As per the national policy, the three-language formula is supposed to be followed in all the schools across the country. The
children are expected to have proficiency in three languages -- mother tongue, Hindi and English -- by the time they take SSC exam. They can acquire proficiency in the languages -- the ability to speak, write and communicate effectively -- provided the languages are taught earnestly by the respective language teachers, and not any teacher teaching any language as is the case presently.
Similarly, the mid-day meal scheme in the BMC schools is a miserable failure. The children are refusing to eat the meals due to sub-standard food provided by the contractors and the middle men. Instead of improving the quality of food served, the civic body is proposing to spend an amount of Rs 27.38 crore on “nutritional supplementary meals that comprise protein-rich dry snacks and other nutrients along with mid-day meals.” The budget proposal reads, “Students spend maximum time in school. Hence, providing them with supplementary nutritious food is necessary. This ensures intake of energy required for grasping of knowledge effectively.” This is bizarre. Forget the nutritional supplementary meals, provide the children standard meals to eat first.
According to a Praja Foundation report, “despite an extensive mid-day meal programme, one-third of children in schools run by India’s richest municipal corporation in India’s richest city, are malnourished, malnutrition increasing from 8 percent in 2013-14 to 34 percent in 2015-16.” And as per the BMC health department, almost half of the children were found to be malnourished in 2015-16, with malnourished children in grade I increasing by 246 percent.
The BMC is proposing to bring about cosmetic changes in the schools without addressing the basic issues which are poor quality of education, high dropout rate and sub-standard mid-day meals. The main problem is the lack of effective supervision and control and the failure to check the graft among civic officials and middle men. Unless there is an honest and sincere auditing and appraisal of teachers’ performance, the poor children will continue to be denied good elementary education. The first priority, as the parents of these unfortunate children say, is to provide the basic amenities -- usable toilets for girls and boys, adequate class rooms with benches and black boards and good quality teachers -- before talking of e-libraries, virtual classrooms, schools of ‘international standard’ and the like.