The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, guaranteed every child aged 6-14, the right to free and compulsory education till elementary level. This remains a deeply flawed legislation. I had participated in the Rajya Sabha debate in July 2009 when this Bill had come up for consideration, expressing serious concerns.

First and foremost, it does not factor in important recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee of which the current HRD minister, Prakash Javadekar, was also a member. Second, in emphasising infrastructure and teacher-student ratio while omitting any consideration of learning outcomes its priorities are misplaced. Third, its implications for private schools, which are obligated with 25% reservations with reimbursements below the average cost, are serious. Fourth, there is lack of clarity on its financial implications, and sharing of cost between the Centre and states.

The government was in a desperate hurry to enact the new law. It was an era of entitlement driven legislations. Recent developments are increasingly vindicating apprehensions about the law.

The threatened takeover of 438 private schools by Delhi government has raised broader, endemic policy concerns. The reasonableness of fees for private schools remains a contentious issue. At a conceptual level, the Supreme Court judgment, in TMA Pai Foundation vs State of Karnataka (2002) 8 SCC 481, had settled the basic principles of a reasonable fee structure.

They must be commensurate with infrastructure, facilities provided, salaries paid and future expansion plans. While commercialisation of education and profiteering was prohibited, a surplus between 6-15% could be utilised for expansion and development.

Successive judgments and the findings of the Sikri commission also recognise that institutions should be given liberty to fix their own fees. This was necessary to promote innovation and excellence in private educational institutions. Qualified teachers could only be induced and retained with competitive salary structures. Market economics and competition will prompt an appropriate balance between costs and outcomes.

Eight years after the enactment of the Bill, there is encouraging data on enrolment. For age groups 6-14 it is above 96% for elementary school, while it is 78.5% for secondary and 54.2% for higher secondary. What is worrying, however, is a growing mismatch between rising enrolment and declining outcomes.

Credible action programmes to improve teacher training both quantitatively and qualitatively remain elusive. It is sad that this challenging obligation had no place in the RTE Act. Besides, total teacher vacancies are 9 lakh at the elementary level and exceed 1 lakh at secondary level. This is a huge backlog and will keep rising every year.

The 11th Annual Status of Education Report released by Pratham this year suggests that “today about one in four children in standard 3 in an average rural school is at Grade 1 in reading and mathematics.” Further, nationally, this picture does not seem to have changed very much over the last decade. There has however been a slight increase in these attainments between 2014 and 2016.

Another interesting feature is the wide interstate variations brought out in the survey. If we use, let us say, fluent story reading as the criterion the grade-level achievement for Standard 3 in Himachal Pradesh was close to 50% while for UP it was less than 10% in an average classroom.

Clearly, we need to adopt flexibility in our teaching methods to teach at the right level and what the Pratham report calls CAMaL (Combined activities for maximised learning).

During the period of 2010-11 and 2015-16, government school enrolment across 20 states declined by 13 million while private schools showed an accretion of 17.8 million. Clearly, parents prefer private schools if they can afford it.

The debate between public and private schools has raged for long. This is a false hiatus. Societies with rising aspirations need both equity and excellence. Seeking inclusiveness while ensuring acceptable outcomes is invariably challenging. Public policies must be designed to harmonise a possible asymmetry. Recent initiatives by the Rajasthan government for government schools to operate on a public private partnership model have important lessons.

Another worrying feature is the growing disconnect between education and employment. A recent broad-based survey to assess the efficacy of India’s education system brings out the harsh reality that only 26% respondents in the survey believe that their schooling has contributed to overall development but more importantly, to their employment.

Getting away from the rote learning method, fostering a culture of creativity and an ability to learn multiple jobs in one’s career lifespan, is critical for the jobs of tomorrow. Restructuring pedagogy and course materials designed to serve this inescapable necessity brooks no delay.

Fortunately, technology has the power to change teaching methods dramatically. The prime minister’s programme on digital connectivity, internet penetration combined with skill inculcation programmes is expected to make a decisive difference. Our present complexities and growing pressures for job creation will permit neither ‘business as usual’ nor ‘teaching as before’.

These challenges must be government’s priority rather than discouraging entrepreneurs to set up private schools. One is reminded of the famous saying of Chamfort, “Education is construed on two prongs, the prong of morality and the prong of prudence.” Improving quality of public schools and also encouraging private initiatives can conserve and promote both morality and prudence. Just as schooling and learning are not coterminous, education is not a matter of rights alone.