Shattering of the aspirations for private ‘English medium’ schools
NOIDA/GHAZIABAD: The building is run down, hidden in a row of other identical buildings. It has two floors and a metal gate. But unlike the others, which are homes, and from where the usual stirrings of life are visible even on a cold December morning, this building is silent. The gate, which has not been opened in months, has been claimed by cobwebs. A large lock protects what is inside, but rust has begun to spread. The lettering on the building has started to fade: The Lord Krishna English Medium Secondary School, Sadarpur village, Gautam Buddh Nagar. The school no longer exists; it closed a little over a year ago, another inanimate victim of the pandemic.
The school, which opened in 2005, once boasted at least 700 students, spanning Classes 1-8, and served Sadarpur, a semi-urban village in the National Capital Region. Except, after the second wave in May 2021, unable to cope with the economic ramifications of government mandated school closures, the owners upped and left.
“Most of the children in this locality used to go to this school. The fee was around ₹400 per month. While they stayed during the first lockdown, they could not sustain after the second lockdown that came in April-May,” said Rajender Chauhan (62) from Sadarpur. The village has tried to get in touch with the owners to ask them if they will return. But they have since moved to Pilkhuwa in Uttar Pradesh, and the fate of the school is uncertain.
Across the country’s metros, small towns and villages, if there was one signboard that captured India’s aspirations, it was the rickety board advertising an “English Medium” private school.
The ads were everywhere, painted on walls in tier 2 towns, on posters on lampposts in urban villages, even on billboards. The schools were everywhere too, a growing industry servicing the space between the desire to move children out of illequipped government schools and the inability to pay for more expensive private institutions. And in English, of course.
Except, even as the pandemic and school shutdowns ravaged education, it devastated the economics of low-cost private schools (LCPS).
If government and larger private schools had the wherewithal to withstand months of no classes, these institutions run out of buildings on rent, and on slim margins, found they could no longer pay rent or salaries. In this third of a five-part series on the effects of the pandemic on India’s schools and children, HT looked at the fate of these small private schools that closed down, and what that has meant for owners, teachers, students, and the larger education ecosystem.
What the pandemic has meant for LCPS Twenty-four kilometres away from Sadarpur, 56-year-old Kamlesh Srivastava sits forlorn at home. In 1998, he founded Kanchan Public School in a village called Gadhi Chaukhandi in Gautam Buddh Nagar, from nursery to Class 5, with 26 teachers, and around 800 students.
“In 2020 when the pandemic hit, we still had hope. We had two buildings in the same compound one of which was on rent of ₹40,000 a month while the other was ours, which we bought in 2011. We first let go of the rented building and continued through 2020 with online teaching. However, as time went by, we were unable to pay salaries as parents stopped paying fees. The strength of students reduced from about 800 to just 150 when we reopened in October
2021. After the second wave, there were barely 50 students who would pay fees, and even then only about half of what they owed. As a result, we had to shut the school,” said Srivastava. Fees at the school started from ₹250 per month for nursery classes to ₹475 per month for Class 5.
With no other source of income left, his married daughters now support Srivastava financially.
But he isn’t the only one associated with the school that is now struggling. Priyanka Yadav, 35, was one of the teachers at the school, earning ₹8,000 a month. A resident of Mamura village, Yadav now gives English tuition classes to children in her village, and her monthly income has dropped to ₹4,500.
“My husband lost his job last year when the pandemic started but got another one this year at a garment factory in Sector 63. We have three children to feed and rent to pay, and with my salary cut to half, we are barely able to make ends meet,” she said.
The national perspective According to a 2017 report titled “Understanding the Affordable Private School Market in India” compiled by non-profit FSG, 86% of children from low-income households in urban India attend affordable or low cost private schools. The report estimated there were 130,000 -160,000 such schools in urban India charging fees between ₹500-₹1,650.
In March 2021, UNICEF released a report highlighting the impact of pandemic on lowcost or affordable private schools, stating, “Covid-19 has hit LCPS especially hard. The economic shock of the pandemic has placed LCPS under significant financial stress... Thousands of LCPS have already shut down, and thousands more are on the brink of closure.”
Officials at the Union ministry of education said that the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2020-21, to be released in July, will likely shed some light on the scale of school closures. “The report maps district-wise numbers of schools, students and teachers.
The closure of schools amid the pandemic will be reflected in this year’s report,” said a senior official at the ministry. Still, it will likely ignore the impact of the second wave as it will include data till March 2021.
The shift to govt schools For the past decade, that she studied in a private “English medium” school, was a matter of pride for 16-year-old Sweety Malik. In March 2020, she passed her class 10 board exam from Angel Public school in the GB Nagar’s Kasna area. Then the pandemic hit, the school shut down and students were given a transfer certificate.
There was another problem. She used to pay a fee of ₹1,100 a month, and even as a desperate family looked around, there were no other schools around them within that fee structure. “So in October 2020, I had to get admission at the Navjivan Inter College in Gejha village. Moreover, my father’s income reduced from ₹7,000 to ₹2,500 a month during the lockdown. So the ability to pay for private school just wasn’t there anymore,” said Malik, a resident of Haldoni village.
Her father is a construction worker while her mother works as a house help in the apartments of Greater Noida.
This shift to government schools is a pattern that is showing up across the country. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021, a significant number of schoolchildren in India have switched from private to government-run schools amid the pandemic. It found a jump in enrolment in government schools between 2018 and 2020, going up from 64.3% to 65.8%. In 2021, it leapt to 70.3%. On the other hand, enrolment in private schools decreased from 28.8% in 2020 to 24.4% in 2021, the report said. On the ground, data from GB Nagar district shows that government primary schools had a strength of 86,651 while secondary schools had 74,497 students enrolled in 2019-20.
Situated in the busy main market of Gejha village, the entrance of Sweety Malik’s new school, Navjivan Inter College is easy to miss. The name of the school, written across the building in red paint, has faded. Inside, there are dirty toilets, broken benches, cracked black boards, and the playground is lined with overgrown shrubs.
The school didn’t have great infrastructure even before the pandemic, and now it has to serve more students: the strength has increased from 800 in 2020 to 1500 in 2021. “We were already overburdened with about 100 students in one class but now there are about 150 students in one class with one teacher for one subject,” said Pushpendra Singh, the school’s principal.
Then, there are those for whom even government schools were not an option. Sanju Chaudhary, 17, was a Class 9 student at GB Nagar’s Amar Public School in sector 37, where he paid a monthly fee of ₹700. He was also one of the brightest among a group of students at a tuition centre run by the NGO Social and Development Research and Action Group. His father, a driver, lost his job during the pandemic, and the eldest of four siblings, Chaudhary was forced to find work.
Mala Bhandari, founder of SADRAG said, “We tried very hard to get Sanju admission into a government school but his parents needed him to start earning.” In Chaudhary’s story, he has gone from talented student, to a worker at a bakery. He has no idea of when, if at all, he will be able to return to the classroom.
DATA FROM GB NAGAR SHOWS GOVERNMENT PRIMARY SCHOOLS HAD A STRENGTH OF 86,651 WHILE SECONDARY SCHOOLS HAD 74,497 STUDENTS ENROLLED IN 2019-20.