The Hindu Business Line : Education financing

The official norm of a pupil-teacher ratio of 40:1 is widely flouted. Teachers posted to rural areas lobby for transfers to urban areas. In isolated areas, single-teacher schools are often the norm, with most schools disproportionately understaffed.

THE Finance Minister won kudos from most analysts for his 2003 Budget. Increased tax sops for children's education were high on the list of proposals that attracted praise. Middle and upper middle-class families that fund their children's education in expensive private schools were unexpected beneficiaries.

Privatisation of elementary education has been a growing phenomenon. While earlier catering only to the urban elite, the position has now changed.

One study has found that private primary schools are found in 17 per cent of all villages and are not attended only by children from privileged families.

Few analysts seemed to have noticed that the allocation for elementary education had been frozen at Rs 4,900 crore, the same as last year. Only, this year, that amount is expected to provide quality primary education to an additional 3 crore children whose parents are not income-tax payees and who will be enrolling in state-run schools, later in the summer. Already, the school system is stretched.

In a review of school enrolment across northern India, Jean Dreze, an international authority on Development Economics, found that if all children aged 6-10 in the sample villages were enrolled in a government primary school, there would be over a hundred pupils in each class.

The apparent rationale was that the gap could be bridged through international donor-funded initiatives. The purely economic rationale cannot be questioned. The Government can, at any given time, raise Rs 10,000 crore in soft loans and grants to fund elementary education.

During the Millenium Summit three years ago, the world had committed to achieving a set of seven development goals by the year 2015. What made this commitment different from the many previous lofty statements was a corresponding commitment from the international donor community that any country with a feasible plan to achieve the target would not lack the funds to carry it through.

In the past two years, it has become quite clear that of the seven development goals, only one is likely to be met: Achievement of universal primary education by 2015.

India is one of the few countries that has shown significant improvement in the 1990-2000 decade. The 2001 census found for the first time that the absolute number of illiterates declined. Also, the problem of non-enrolment is no longer an all-India phenomenon. About 75 per cent of out-of-school children live in five States.

Based on the accomplishments of the 1990s, India is on course to achieve the target well before the deadline. Indeed, the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan targets 2010 to achieve universal retention nationwide. In their desire to back a winning horse, international donors would gladly fund an increasing proportion of India's elementary education budget.

For all of this achievement is despite low government investment in elementary education. In 1995, the government had committed to investing 6 per cent of GDP on elementary education. Today, investment is just over 4 per cent.

According to the government's own estimate, to assure eight years of quality education to all children, would require $20 billion.

The availability of replacement funds from the international aid agencies for schooling, however, does not take away from the question: Whose responsibility is the education of India's children?

The Constitution of India is clearly committed to the cause of education. Indeed, the Constitution directs the State to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 years and also unequivocally endorses State intervention to redress an adverse educational scenario. Further, the Supreme Court has held that education for children up to the age of 14 years is a fundamental right.

Without directly challenging the Constitution or the Supreme Court, the Finance Minister has made known the Government's thinking through the Budget proposals. By increasing the tax sops available for children's education, the Finance Minister has acknowledged the role of income-tax paying parents as primary providers of education.

And by freezing the allocation for elementary education from government revenue, he has accepted that international aid agencies can and should play and increasingly significant role in providing primary education.

A few weeks before the Budget, the same Government had announced the launch of the Bharat Shiksha Kosh, a fund to tap corporate and individual donations to support education initiatives.

Long on vision but short on details of how it would be managed and where it would be targeted, the Kosh found no support from the Finance Minister in his speech.

By his Budget proposals, the Finance Minister has brought into question the role of the state in education financing.

For decades, it was politically accepted that education, especially, but not limited to the poor and the socially excluded, would be a charge on the revenue account. That position has never been challenged.

Yet, in the last few years, the Government, first through cuts in higher education allocations and now a shift in funding patterns for elementary education, has sent out a clear message on the future direction of education financing in India. It is a shift in political thinking that needs to be challenged.

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