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The education system in India has undergone fundamental change with the gradual transformation of socio economic structure of our society through the various stages. In modern day society, the system of education not only has a social, cultural and political dimensions, it has also an economic outlook. It is the economic aspects of education which bring not only to the question of the economic efficiency and productivity of a particular education system but also and more importantly the potential benefits in terms of equity and inclusive growth and their distributive justice to the vast majority of deprived section of children in our society both in the contest of the urban and rural areas. After more than 34 years, the present government makes a transformation to the old education policy (1986) to a new beginning of initiating the new education policy 2020 with an objective to overcome the long pending fallacious structural polices of primary, secondary, higher and technical education.

In recent years, sustained and high levels of economic growth provide a unique opportunity and the momentum for faster social sector development. Investing in school education now being considered to play a key role in meeting the World Bank’s social development objectives, which support inclusive growth, social cohesion and accountability of children education as the core of development. Professor Amartya Sen recently emphasized education as an important parameter for any inclusive growth in an economy. The policies must inbuilt to focus on inclusive rather than divisive growth strategies which are also a foundation stone of the NEP 2020. In the light of the above thematic perception, the paper has been divided in to four sections. Section–I has been attempted to put the agenda for equity and Inclusive growth, while section-II highlights some critical issues regarding the recent shift to the NEP 2020 concerning the equity and inclusive education model in the light of situational conditions for adopting it both in the context of rural and urban India. Section-III presents an overview of policy concern to the emerging pattern of public and private education initiatives and to pinpoint what is missing and what to be done to support the vast majority of deprived section of children to the core of getting their early learning processes. Section-IV finally concludes with the aggregative conclusion. The Agenda for Equity and Inclusive Growth Truly speaking, education is universally recognized as a central component of human capital and the core to the early learning system. The role of education as a contributor to economic growth and its impact on population control, life expectancy, infant mortality, improving nutritional status and strengthening civil institutions is well recognized. Moreover, it is generally accepted by almost all the educational experts that the social rates of return on investments in all levels of education much exceed the long term opportunity cost of capital to attract and retain the children in the schools. However it has been seen that as the child grows, the opportunity cost of sending the child to schools increases and incentives become less important. It has also been observed that socio-economic factors often come in the way of educating girls beyond a certain class. On the supply side the reasons behind children not being in school extend from non availability of schools, poor quality of education, including irregular opening of schools, poor learning environment etc. The impetus for both integration and inclusion comes largely from a concern for the rights of children and young people with special educational needs. It is paradoxical, that the moment we think of providing resources for equal access, it inevitably results in identification leading to segregation of those children who are different and have special education needs. In a society, when the children are given a right to belong, they are also given a right to their diversity. Thus, belongingness is a right and not something that children with disabilities must earn. Providing support to students with disabilities and so their inclusion can be socially and academically meaningful. It is the key challenge that are being faced by the teachers for empowering of schooling to the children. Literature on equity and inclusive growth and time to time its application to schooling of the children is vast and growing. In India, different models of inclusion are being practiced and executed. The selection of a model is, however; based on the resources available in that particular region. Full inclusion is rarely practiced in educational institutions. Due to huge resource crunch and the stress on budgetary limitation of optimization of resources mostly resource models with variations from residential to itinerant models are being practiced in various parts of the country. Though all these implementing strategies have been largely accepted, none of them has been successfully provide an optimum outcome either in between all these models. There are many examples of good education outcomes under the schemes of PPP model with minor adjustments in the norms. The only remaining alternative, therefore, is to pursue the goal of universal school coverage through public private partnership in which low cost private providers of school education who pay much lower teacher salary, cover a significant part of school education. It is observed by the many studies that private/non government schools can supply a reasonable quality of school education at almost 25% to 35% of the cost of government education. Yet, there are many hidden reality behind this surface-level accord, that are remain unaddressed and under examined on this critical issues, particularly concerning the early start at once a “fair” and equitable beginning for schooling of all children, irrespective of their social position and the economic conditions vis-a-vis the deep-rooted wide spreading existing regional disparities among the leader and lagged states. The issues are not only concerning to the question of whether it is a “fitting” start, that is, to say a kind of playful preparation for young children to enter school but also an optimum drill for an impending educational horse race for getting the children ready for school. Keeping in view the inherent structural limitations of more and more political interventions without having followed the democratic norms of economic empowerment to the vast majority of the poor children, the political philosopher A. Gutmann (1982) rightly argued that the state, the parents, and the education professionals have custodial authority over children’s education, and that the power of these three authorities needs to be balanced. In this era of renewed social distancing and divisions and the more and more inclusion of the private sector dependence on children education especially in India under the NEP 2020 have already make a dead weight of entrenched social inequalities, the importance of state-mediated measures of child security and development cannot be ignored. Hence, it appears that to defend, on equity grounds, social policies, such as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), to combat a rising trend, that is evident especially in urban India, of “premature privatisation” of preschool education. Defending government-run preschool centres, however, should not detract attention from barefacedly highlighting the need for their large-scale improvement. ICDS centres, therefore, need to be both defended and improved. In this new era of urban displacement and dispossession, on the idea of people’s right to the city, there is such profound neglect of children’s need for a decent institutional space which indicates how poor our institutional resources are, especially for the poorer children. It seems as if, the equity and social justice for educational policy making insists more on children’s school readiness, than on the schools’ readiness for children. Amartya Sen (2015) put the issue more seriously for the coaching and the preparation of children rather prematurely for a learning culture that celebrates the “first-boysyndrome”, but fails to stoke up children’s curiosity, imagination and critical thinking. This too, is a form of quality crisis that remains rather unnoticed by many of us who take high-quality to be a natural correlate of anything private. In contrast, the ambience of an average private preschool, of a low-fee variety in particular, is quite monotonous, where the tedium of mainstream school education has already commenced, taming bubbly children through dulling drills of memorisation, repetition and rigidity. One important element of high-quality early childhood education pertains to the quality of assessment tools themselves that are used to evaluate a child’s progress. Such tools need to be sensitive to cognitive diversities and “multiple intelligences” that both experts and commoners find among children. It is difficult to disagree that “Early childhood education is an easy policy to support from almost any normative viewpoint.” But, does it mean that children’s well-being and their rights easily find a place at the centre of attention in our democracy which is just contradictory as the evidence suggests otherwise (Nielsen, 2017:169). Dreze (2017) pointedly put the issue of hitting the recent budget cut on ICDS and asked why the “axe” falls so heavily and not so infrequently on children, and also gives us a clue by alluding to a senior officer of the Finance Ministry who commented that he had not noticed such a pattern, and that they made the cuts in a hurry, the details of which had not been “thought through.” Such absent-minded budget cuts vis-à-vis child-related schemes indicate not just policy insensitivity, but a far more disconcerting symptom of societal and political indifference in our country towards children’s welfare. Early childhood education, like many other social programmes, is embedded within a social topography of unequal power emanating from caste, class and religious disparities and hence, is a politically challenging problem. Simplifying such a complex political problem driven by unequal power will not guarantee a fair and fitting start for all. To give a quick example, finding a decent institutional space to house the Anganwadi centre in a city is not merely a matter of a technical fix, but linked to political-economy forces of urbanisation, including gentrification, the power of real estate lobbies, and the counter-demands for “spatial justice.” The vision of preschool education and the surrounding debate, therefore, needs to get closer to the structural dynamics of inequality that Piketty, in a different context, draws our attention to. This also entails the need to evaluate the role of the state in the lives of India’s children through a critical sense. It appears that the state seems to roll back, and not roll out, many of its child-related social policies and programmes. Moreover by offering private preschool outfits a regulation-free zone, the state appears to reward private interests at the cost of child welfare. It is, however, important to open the concealed fact that India has a vast regional state level disparities that do not make the very core of the objectivity of maintaining the theme of unity in diversity in equal and inclusive democratic norms. The tragic state of conditions is that the small children in some parts of the same national universe get an opportunity for an early start, whereas on the other part are deprived from a fair start and a fitting start. The rest of India can draw lessons from that school of democracy.

Some Critical Issues on the Equity and Inclusive Growth Model

A Reflection on the Shift to the NEP 2020

To find out some critical issues in the light of the trends as focused in overall pattern of Indian school education system in the last section regarding the potential benefits in terms of equity and inclusive growth, it is apparently clear that with the trends and patterns of public and private education initiatives vis-a-vis the recent shift to the new education policy 2020 need immediate attention so as to focus a relevant suggestive line of direction in gaining the inner content of potential benefits of equity and inclusive empowerment to the vast majority of deprived section of schooling of our children. To have more egalitarian education model with a structural and situational conditions as well as the state level regional disparities of children schooling both in the rural and in the urban areas, it is necessary to evaluate the trends and the pattern of public and private education initiatives. Providing equal opportunities does not mean opening up similar tenets to all children. Hence, the equal opportunities to be kept in mind by considering the diverse nature of their individual needs.

There are at least six pronged action plan required for meeting the challenges of equity and inclusiveness in Indian system of school education which suffers from a chronic vicious circle of interactive negative impact on the overall performance and achievement of school education for the last seventy five years of our independence. We have to remember Gandhian reminder that literacy in itself is no education without having productive attainment of education at the cost of the job orientation rather than simply holding the degrees.

The issues that have already been examined with respect to the different perspectives of school education and consequently its failures to meet the objective of universal and inclusive school education in India are in totality suffering from the following deep rooted problems, viz; (i) dropout and enrolment (ii) teacher absenteeism (iii) public incentives and reform (iv) midday meal scheme (v) para teacher schemes (vi) public-private partnership.

To overcome the deep rooted vicious circle jeopardizing the very edifice for our school system, the school education must be tackled both from the supply and demand sides so as to enhance the rate of enrolment, on the one hand; and to reduce the drop out, on the other. These issues pinpointed an open fact that the substantial regional variations between the leader and the laggard states exist even within the moderate rate of success achieved by some states and thereby enhancing the extent and the degree of the level of disparity that seems to be increasing in the post reform period. Under the present LPG policy dispersion, the opportunities offered by the market seems to have had an anti egalitarian effect on school education and the growing disparities spreading a wall between the rich and the poor children schooling and between the provider of education level by the leader and laggard states. Some of the futurologists have rightly put that “21^st century is good for education but wad for the mankind”. While opportunities for the professionally trained, highly education skilled manpower have increased, which are simply encouraging the upper echelons to acquire higher educational levels, but unfortunately declining state support and high cost of education have made the task of acquiring even basic education more difficult for the general masses. A polarisation in human capital formation seems to be taking place in the post liberalisation era. This inequality in education attainment thus accentuates socio economic inequalities. What masks this “democratic deficit” on the agenda for equity and inclusive growth is to view social policies that are virtually disconnected from the economics of education and intrinsically linked with more and more of literacy programs of political nature, without having any productive outcome of education to the children. The entire Gandhian philosophy of protecting the human dignity and happiness resolving around the central point on education is completely overlooked by the policy makers in resolving a meaningful man making education two our children. Tagore had rightly seen education in the light of his belief that people must be able to live and reason in ‘freedom of mind’ which can only be brought about by the expansion of basic education as the central to social progress. Swami Vivekananda has said that education is the manifestation of perfection in mankind. He provided us a man making model for education. He said, “education is not at all a book learning process and not even diverse knowledge but true education is a development of the faculty of knowledge, skill formation and creation of potentials among individuals for manifestation of perfection in themselves”. Of course, policies need to generate concrete programmes whose effective implementation as put strongly by Gandhi, Tagore and Vivekananda require practical skills of governance, more and more concentration towards economics of education rather than  as mere technical political interventions. However, it is to be generally accepted that owing to the commitment and managerial skills of some of the frontline administrative and education workers that some Anganwadi centres in the country provide us with inspiring examples of high-quality support for early-years learning. Yet, the recognition of their contribution as a professional workforce needs to be further developed and a decent honorarium to be more and more creative and capable is unfortunately and almost missing in policy discussions. It is this culture of political nature that destroys the very edifice of child-related programmes as mere schemes rather than to the heat and dust of democratic pressures that makes it urgent that an effective action plan is required to bring back even contentious politics.

The progress in school education system, indeed; depends largely in the quality of basic education which includes a number of factors such as socio-economic status of the family, accessibility of school, infrastructural facilities, teacher competency, courses and curriculum, motivation and accountability of teachers not only from the angle of competency but also the angle of their presence in school in time. All those factors have a deeper influence over both quality and quantity of basic education.

It seems that NEP 2020 acknowledges a “learning crisis” in India: low attainment of foundational and numeracy skills, i.e., being able to read and comprehend “basic text” and carry out basic addition and subtraction with Indian numerals, but how far the goal to be successfully achieved is a matter of doubtful validity.

The NAP 2020, however; has given munch focus on inclusion in RTE act by enhancing the allocation for uniformity from Rs 400 to Rs 600 per child per annum. Similarly, allocation for CWSN increased from Rs 3000 to Rs 3500 per child per annum. Besides, the amount of stipend of Rs 200 per month for Girls with Special Needs from Classes I to XII. The proposal for special training for age appropriate admission of out of school children is also taken seriously at elementary level.

NEP 2020 takes a strong approach to each of these issues. Importantly, it examines regulatory architecture, attempts to correct flaws and moves towards providing quality education for all. Although, NEP has several innovative ideas and daring proposals, but also makes a few problematic assumptions. The major recommendations of the K.K. Committee that have been approved include a 5+3+3+4 system in school education that incorporates early childhood care and education; universal education that includes the secondary level; adoption of school complexes; breakfast in the school meal programme; and introduction of vocational education at the upper primary level.

Some policy decisions are bold, but it needs a long road to reach the goal what are the proposals or statements that are emphatically made in the draft but are missing in the policy? One important statement that was repeatedly made in the draft policy, that all commercially oriented private institutions will be closed, is missing in the final policy. Though the 2020 policy promises closure of substandard teacher education institutions only.  A few other recommendations of the committee did not find a place in the final policy. They include setting up of a National Education Commission at the national level and a similar one at the State level. There is no mention of State School Education Regulatory Authorities in the 2020 policy. At the State level, the Department of School Education is regarded as the apex body. There is also no promise of ‘full’ recruitment of teachers at all levels, though the policy promises robust recruitment mechanisms to be put in place. Among the few new proposals, the establishment of a model Multi-Disciplinary Education and Research University in every district is one. In school education, a National Assessment Centre has been promised to make assessment and evaluation more holistic. On the whole, the policy, unlike the draft, rightly recognizes the need to strengthen the Central Advisory Board of education. Policy makers and administrators have been struggling unsuccessfully with some of these issues for years. A major challenge of the policy makers, therefore; will continue to face is how to differentiate the benevolent philanthropic private sector from undesirable but powerful market forces in the education sector and regulate the entry and growth of the latter.

Public V/s Private Education: An Overview

Broadly speaking the marketisation of children education in the form of more privatisation and less commitment towards the state’s involvement to render stealth on the collective choice about goals of preschooling for children in an isolated has been atomising individual choice and voice that virtually are contrasted a polity to arrive at a social choice with respect to its educational purpose through democratic channels. This has to lend itself towards shaping that collective choice, and hence, the need for democratic politics to swirl around the idea and practice of child empowerment. The vision of preschool education and the surrounding debate, therefore, needs to get closer to the structural dynamics of inequality. This has also to be focused keeping in view the role of the state in the lives of India’s children through a critical lens to reward private interests at the cost of child welfare.

In this given background, the PPP model and the inclusive empowerment of children education along with the digital skilling and the innovation model incorporated in NEP 2020 vis-a-vis a collective voice expressed through democratic channels have to be laid down towords shaping the need for democratic policy and practice of child empowerment.

The following steps need to be incorporated seriously keeping in view its economic benefit to the children schooling instated of political goal of gaining vote bank support by only indulge into literacy complain  without having any attainment to the capability creation of productive outcome of children schooling.

Action Plans for Minimizing Drop out ratio  and maximising Enrolment ratio:

1.   Enrolment targets achieved to be closely monitored by the concerned local Committees, By a recording the data once every month

2.   Regular checks on number of absentees of children at lower classes and for   long durations maybe done. The Committees to contact the parents in case of long absentees

3.   Retention is as much of importance as enrolment since the latter is one time affair and these figures are no guide to actual number of children attending classes in practice.

4.   Mere incentives alone are not sufficient in themselves to enhance children’s access to quality education. Most of the times. Scholarships and sponsorships creates negative impact o the siblings of the family. This needs to be carefully thought out with proper monitoring and guidance.

5.   Midday Meal Scheme needs to be streamlined properly, enhancing the present amount of Rs.2/- per pupil to at least Rs.3/- as is being done in Tamil Nadu. Involvement of appropriate NGOs is to be strengthened for better implementation of the scheme.

Action Plans for Minimising Teachers Absenteeism  And Rationalising Training and Awareness:

1.     Teachers’ absenteeism to be monitored and noted not only by government officials but by parents and community as a whole, Appropriate systems at school level needs to be worked out.

2.     The ASER in its annual reports repeatedly revealed that only 33 per cent of schools reported all teachers present with no absenteeism. The Large percentage of Absenteeism of teachers, particularly at Primary Level needs to be rectified.

3.     Teachers’ duties from government work on Surveys and all other duties not related to teaching to be reduced as far as possible and some alternative teachers/para teachers/vidya volunteers to be appointed to enable regular teaching in cases where such duties are unavoidable.

4.     Investment in teachers and teacher education need to be made in a systematic way that appreciates the inter relationship among the economic, political, structural and practice aspects of the education system.

Action Plan for Educational Incentives and Reforms:

1.     The single text book policy has to be replaced by the textbooks for multiple linguistic communities, thereby making the curricula much easier for the rural masses

2.     Further, Education reforms that promote change from content based syllabi to a learning outcomes model have significant implications for learning resources.

3.     The passing the implementation of the Right to Education Bill, needs to be operational so that it may help disadvantaged groups on the basis of ground level reality with the exclusion of any programme.

4.     To enable multiple exit points after class VII to enable students to take up vocational training.

5.     School uniforms and alternative transport system can help poorer students ease some problems of clean and variety clothes everyday. In this effort the community support can contribute small amounts and start bus services.

6.     Scholarships and sponsorships can help promote girls’ education

7.     Delays in purchase of equipments, even lapse of grant funds for a particular financial year were found to be common reasons for poor performance in schools. Timely sanction of funds by Government authorities need to expedited.

8.     Campaign on child labour, in particular girl child to be spread to all districts of the state. Study conducted showed 20 per cent of these children are full time workers and 60 per cent in the age group of 5-14 years have never attended any school or had any formal education.

9.     The Midday Meal Programme an incentive for children to attend school has to cater to the prescribed nutritional norms. There is need for revision. ‘Single Dish Meals’ with broken wheat (dalia) or rice incorporating some amount of pulse or soyabeans along with seasonal vegetables and be alternative for achieving these norms.

10.   Separate toilets for girls and boys should be mandatory not only to facilitate proper sanitation facilities, but also to enable retention of girl students in particular.

The Strategies For PPP Approach:

1.     In the Private-Private Approach, there are good examples of International Clubs like Lion’s, Rotary and other joining hands with other NGOs, both internationally and nationally in their endeavours in the filed of Education.

2.     Infrastructure is one area where there is urgent need of both Private-Public Participation as well as Private-Private Participation. From ASER overall survey, it is clear that only 16-20 per cent of schools both at Primary and Upper Primary levels on an average had toilet facilities and about 30 per cent had no drinking water facilities. There is hence need to re-examine the designs and school building models for different capacities of school children.

Strategies for the Inclusive Model of Community participation:

1.     The whole school approach creates an inclusive environment for the entire community.

2.  Building strong People’s Movement and thinking many steps ahead laterally and no vertically. The “Inverted Pyramid” is the model to be adopted for total community participation. Closer and frequent coordination with elected representatives of PRIs.

3.  The Government should adopt common school system imparting same quality of education throughout the country. Recently a Survey has been conducted and recommendations submitted regarding common school system to the Bihar Government.

4.     Creating Awareness and viable open communication channels between education administrators/ implementers and local officials, teachers parents and children with Right to Information.

5.     The community based associations of youth groups have been playing a key role in supporting the new leadership of women, dalits and tribals in Panchayati Raj Institutions and Urban Local Bodies in India.

Action Plans For Computer Literacy and e-learning:

1.     New system of distance learning and Web-enabled education can be used to reach remote and underserved regions and segments of the population.

2.     Students, teachers parents and the whole community can benefit a great deal with ICT programmes on Education.

Apart from the benefits of e-learning, it is necessary that conventional literacy has to be strengthened by interlinking. Computer literacy for the vast majority of the rural areas of our children in an order so that even children left with elementary education do not feel lost. However, what kind of computer literacy would be feasible as well as affordable from the angle of economic efficiency and the equity criteria of the different alternative investment packages at different costs are a matter of serious concern in a modern his technology society.            

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