The Bihar Education Department struck off names of over 20 lakh students from nearly 75,000 government schools for remaining absent so far
Published Date – 11:45 PM, Mon – 27 November 23
By Sujeet Kumar
A strong education system is the backbone of any country’s growth and prosperity. Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently said education has the power to change the destiny of the country. It helps achieve the country’s progress and targets.
India has taken strides in strengthening its primary education system. It has introduced the New Education Policy and brought several changes in textbooks to allow children to realise their potential and pursue their goals. Regrettably, education data does not paint a rosy picture. In a recent global ranking, India stands at 32 behind China and Turkey, among 78 countries. Over a decade ago, another survey, Programme for International Student Assessment, placed India at 73rd among 74 countries.
Learning Outcomes
The Annual Status of Education Report (2022) flags multiple issues like poor infrastructure and teacher-student ratio, which affect the learning outcomes of children. The report states that only 42.8% of students in the fifth grade can read at the second-grade level. The number of students completing their primary education with poor numeracy skills is startling. Only 25.6% of students in fifth grade can do division.
However, children often take paid private tuition classes to augment their learning. The proportion of such kids reported was 30.5% in 2022, which increased from 26.4% in 2018. In States like Bihar, the proportion of such children increased by eight percentage points or more over 2018 levels.
Such developing scenarios not only incur extra financial burdens for the families but also put government schools and education policies in the spotlight. To address these, the government’s efforts to improve education quality involve different aspects, but its decisions often have negative and far-reaching consequences for children as it fails to address the root cause of the problem.
Bihar’s Case
In recent days, the Bihar education department has been in the headlines for improving the quality of education in schools — from mass-level teacher recruitment to ensuring 100% attendance of enrolled kids in government schools. The latter catches attention as it says if enrolled children are found missing, their names should be struck off from the register. Following this, the Bihar Education Department struck off the names of over 20 lakh students from nearly 75,000 government schools for remaining absent so far. Of these, over 2.66 lakh students were to appear for their class 10 and 12 board examinations next year.
The authorities have two reasons for this decision — first, the Bihar government provides incentives to school students through direct benefit transfer, which costs the exchequer Rs 3,000 crore per annum. If the enrolment of even 10% of such absentee students is cancelled, a whopping Rs 300 crore could be saved and used for other development and welfare schemes, and second, this strict measure would ensure 100% attendance.
There is no doubt removing these children from the schools will allow the government to save money, but at what cost? Are we not leaving the key question behind — why are these children not attending school? Further, will making attendance mandatory bring a desire among children to learn and go back to school?
Back to School
Based on our fieldwork in Bihar for several years, we have learnt various things behind the poor attendance but not limited to these. First, many enrolled children do not go to government schools but attend private schools because there is a common belief that the quality of teaching is better in these private schools. However, it is important to mention that all these private schools have no proper affiliation with the examination board and these children finally appear for board exams through the government school where they had been enrolled for years.
Second, most of the children enrolled in government schools come from poor socioeconomic groups of the population whose parents are cash-strapped, and often involve their kids during the peak season of agriculture, leading to their absence from school; and third, a large number of parents believe that schools do not have adequate teachers, and even if their kids attend school, they will learn nothing except sitting in the classroom. Hence, they enroll their children in government schools that allow them to appear for board exams. In addition, they register their kids in nearby coaching centres or send them to places like Kota for preparation for board exams and for clearing engineering and medical entrances.
Mandatory Attendance
Removing these children from government schools has implications that extend far beyond the immediate context. First, they cannot appear for the board exam, and second, this will introduce a new level of corruption for appearing in the board exams as the student’s parents will try for their children to appear in the board exams anyhow and will be ready to pay any amount for the same. Many who cannot afford will be deprived of being matriculate or pass senior secondary, which will hinder their chances of moving upward in the education and occupation ladder because these are the minimum level of qualifications for appearing in different competitive examinations and pursuing higher education.
There is no disagreement that compulsory attendance does have an impact on children’s learning outcomes, but there is little evidence that mandatory attendance laws increase the number of children in school. It is absurd to expect that such a decision would salvage a situation in which children do not attend classes. What is even more strange is how this will fix poor educational quality, in the absence of other measures.
Removing these kids from school results in lifetime opportunity costs for them. If the government really cares about improving the quality of education and bringing these children to school, it needs to fix obvious levers to attract children to school. Firstly, ensure adequate and motivated teachers, and good infrastructure in school, secondly, motivate parents to send their kids to school and thirdly, identify and address the fears that stop children from attending school.
